2019 Cantina del Pino, Barbaresco - Magnum

2019 is a remarkable Piedmont vintage, and this is unfortunately, the last vintage for Renato Vacca – one of Barbaresco’s most important figures and truly a legendary winemaker. The wines are concentrated and super expressive, but also perfectly balanced and true to their terroirs. For his Barbaresco normale bottling, he would gently vinify separately his different micro-plots of Ovello, Gallina, Albesani and Starderi, age them for a year, and then decide how to blend them in larger casks before bottling a year later. The diversity of his small plots with different exposures and the individual ferments by parcel allowed him to make an incredibly balanced, consistent, dialed-in normale year after year. The 2019 Barbaresco is an outstanding example of Renato’s tremendous “normale” bottling.  A very representative wine of this particularly fascinating 2019 vintage, a vintage that occurred largely in warm, solar conditions but managed to avoid overwrought flavors and ABV levels are a point to a half a point lower than they were in ’17 and ’18. You feel the ripeness and concentration of flavors in this wine, but also a great sense of balance and complexity. It’s a joy to drink now but will certainly improve and cellar for decades to come.