This Is Our Most Out There, Wonderful Offer Ever
– A Stealth Winery from an Ancient Family
– 2,500 Years in the Wine Business
– Over 400 Years of Winemaking
As Great As the Greatest
– That Magical and Ultra Rare Combination of Elegance and Finesse
– I’ve Had a Lot of These with Age and They Are Magic
– Our Most Experienced Nebbiolo Collectors Revere These
– A Stealth Winery from an Ancient Family-
– 2,500 Years in the Wine Business
– Over 400 Years of Winemaking
The House Style
– More Old School Than Any Langhe Nebbiolo or Barbaresco Made Today
– Remarkable Traditional Nebbiolos
– Stored in Old Neutral Barrels Until Their Recent Bottling
– Some of the Most Spectacular Wines in Italy Bar None
– Really Unlike Almost Anything Made Today
2016 Rocche de Barbari Barbaresco Alvio Riserva
– Very Similar to Young Giacosa
– That Giacosa, Perfectly Ethereal, Strawberry Rhubarb, Cherry
– The Delicacy of Scent
– The Fineness, the Refinement
– Needs Another 10 Years to Hit Its Peak But This Could Be the Brother from Another Mother
– The Best 2016 Barbaresco I’ve Ever Had
– Nose: Spellbinding
– Cherry, Licorice, Roses
– Amazing Tar and Chestnut
– Like Smelling Velvet
– Dense, layered and so so pure
– Palate: Unreal, Pure Fruit
– Remarkable Freshness
– Insane Inner Mouth Aromas
– Florals and Perfect Cherries
– Clarity Is Outrageous – Elite!
– Complex, Structured and So Juicy
– Endless Finish
In the Same League As the Best – Mascarello, Burlotto, Giacosa
Those be some fighting words.
But I’ve had enough old Rocche dei Barbari to say that with conviction.
They have that certain finesse and elegance that you only get with the elite wines of the Langhe.
I’ve been waiting to sell today’s wine for over three years. I dream about these wines.
The Wine
This is the best 2016 Barbaresco I have ever had. The 2016 Rocche de Barbari Barbaresco Alvio Riserva is $69.99 each on a 4-pack. I thought this was going to be double the price and I’d still happily sell it. But, nope. This is $70 for the best 2016 Barbaresco wine I’ve had. This just smokes the rest. It is such a standout. The wine has a specific character that I’ve only found in young Giacosa. I cannot tell you how great this wine is for $69.99. I was going to sell it for $150+ and had confidence I’d sell a lot. Now it’s half that and the stuff is sitting in a barrel in Barbaresco waiting, aging and ready to fill however many bottles everyone orders off this offer.
This is one of those wines. The wine you’ll talk about at the tasting of more expensive wines. It’s spellbinding.
Stunning nose. Spellbinding cherry, licorice, roses with amazing tar and chestnut. Just wow. Just ridiculous aromas out of the gates. Amazing depth and no hard edges on the aromas. And these usually take 3 hours to get going. It’s like smelling velvet. With just the most vivid cherries. Very very impressive. Haunting. Layered. 97 point nose. Wow, what fruit! Just incredible. Dense, layered and so so pure. This just smokes any other 16 I’ve ever had. So refined for such a big wine. As it airs it gets into Krazor territory. Chestnut, spice, tar, roses and stunning cherry flower dusted fruit. Pure sweet fresh roses and dried roses. The detail is unreal as is the verisimilitude. The aromas are just so real. It’s like smelling a perfect truffle – the aromatic complexity is so distinct and so remarkably variegated, it’s quite impossible to describe. Tar, deep wood shavings, chestnut aromas, aged old library with a good amount of never opened dusty Russian classics. The florals are so crazy and man oh man the beautiful high end tobacco and endless flowers are something to behold! Wow! This nose is layered and so deep and keeps revealing itself. Bittersweet caramel, spice and so much. A $350 nose. This nose has the stuff you dream of.
On the palate, this has unreal, pure fruitand the freshness is remarkable. Insane inner mouth aromas. Florals and perfect cherries. The clarity here is outrageous!It’s like looking at the highest OLED display one can come across. Complex, structured and so juicy with just the best, most tangy, epic tense fruit. This is perfect Nebbiolo fruit for me. This is a baby, like a serious baby but this is epic, epic Barbaresco. But air is thus wine’s friend. The palate is pure sweet roses with the most elegantly fine counterbalancing acids. It is brilliant. Hints of opulence abound but this has daggers and angles for days with ridiculous freshness and finesse. Just incredible. Massive concentration and huge minerality. Velvety and substantial tannins and very long. Like one sip is a 3 minute experience. Explosivelike nothing else. This is regal and the best Barbaresco I’ve had in years. What energy and freshness on the palate. No hard edges. Complex, deep and so concentrated. This has some slight brambly cherry fruit but this is like the Primanebbia (see above) and will take 3 hours or longer for the fruit to be truly expressive. After 3 hours this becomes just crazy. Palate has now insane mega mid to early season cherry fruit that is so juicy, so dense and so impressive you cannot believe all the tannin from the first hour or two has been transformed into gorgeous cherry fruit with insanely detailed silky tannins. What tannins are left are velvety and sweet. Wow. So ethereal Long. Just so damn impressive. Great now after 3 hours. This wine is just an experience and you just have to get some. What a discovery.
Wow that finish. It’s endless. But for such a large scaled wine the finesse here is also what sets this apart. Drink this now young with a decant but really in 5-10 years these will shine. What a deal.
The background is a little complicated, so I need you to bear with me and try and read this.
Very Important Background
Bottle Variation: The Scourge of Old Langhe Wines. As we all know, Langhe wines are aged before bottling. For Barolo, they must be aged at least 38 months, at least 18 in barrel. For Barbaresco, this is 24 months, at least 9 of which must be in barrel. At this point, they may be bottled. And this is where the problems start. Bottles, as we all know, are sealed with corks and corks are natural products. The key thing that affects the aging curve of a wine is the amount of oxygen that the cork allows into the wine. Because all corks are different and allow different amounts of oxygen to seep in, bottles from the same vintage, producer and vineyard will age at different rates. So if you try 3 bottles of a wine, one could be perfect, one could be too young and one could be over the hill. The problem is that if you are spending $100 or more on old Langhe wines so you are really spending $300 a bottle for each good bottle.
The Solution: Barrel Ageing until Bottling.
What today’s producer has figured out is that if you leave the wine in the barrels until they are ready to bottle and drink, you eliminate the problem of cork variation. And this is what they do. They store them in large neutral barrels (or sometimes concrete after a time). Furthermore, every cork that they use is tested by both specialized equipment and experienced human testers to ensure that there is no cork taint (TCA). The wines are only bottled at the time of sale.
The Style: Old, Old, Old School
The style here is hyper traditional. We are talking very long and slow fermentations. Super long macerations. They are not trying to maximize extraction – it’s almost like they are trying to avoid extraction in order to allow secondary characteristics to shine through.
These are like wines that were made in the 1950s except, of course, they are bought from the cellar and using the process described above to preserve the wines on a consistent ageing curve.
The Family
I cannot tell you the name of the family but they have been in the wine business for a long time. The first records of them being in the wine business are from 492 BC. Yes that’s over 2,500 years. They have been making wine since 1585 (over 400 years).
Right now, they are in basically beta testing with their sales and plan to substantially increase prices once they make a formal announcement in a couple of years. I am not even allowed to mention the name of the winemaker, not even his first name.
This estate is maybe our best estate in Piedmont. But the offers have been sporadic because of their unique bottling system and they basically shut down for 18 months due to the pandemic and they had some internal issues and are just about to open back up. The family members are all treasures. They are earnest, kind and hardworking and are not motivated by commercial success. Perfect for Fass Selections. They are quirky and eccentric and I work on their schedule and will do whatever they want or need me to do as the wines are that good. They are unbelievable wines and have somewhat of a cult following at Fass Selections. The cult will get a lot bigger today.
Please call Cheryl at 949 378 5251 after emailing with your firstorder if you are a first time customer (we prefer not to receive credit card numbers over E-Mail).
OFFICE HOURS 4-7 PM
I love drinking and selecting wines – but my passion for teaching people about wine is almost as big. I’m happy to announce a block of time each day where people can call me just to chat about wine in general. These blocks are NOT intended to sell wine (I do that all day). This is to talk to me about wine pairings or great producers or how long to age wines or styles of wine making or the latest wine controversy. My goal is to help people learn more about wine and enjoy it more. Call me at 917-912-4355 from 4-7EST Monday – Friday.
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A Word about Fass Selections and Social Media
I am big into certain social media and I want people to take pictures of the wines they have received or will receive and tag me in them and share their thoughts. I a am on Instagram. Please tag me there. I also am on Delectable which I love a lot. It is Iphone/Ipad only, but it’s like Instagram meets Facebook for wine. Tag me there and find me there as well. I want to know if you liked the wine, were not moved by the wine, hated the wine or the wine gave you a religious experience. I want to know it all. Feedback is key and I will answer all feedback e-mails as quickly as I can.
For all billing and invoicing inquiries please contact Rick at refassselections.@gmail.com.