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Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of happy bottles, the official blog of Grandi
Bottiglie. I’m Emanuele Spagnuolo and I’m your wine pusher.
Today we go back to our greatest passion, the passion about vintage bottles. We’ve
been tasting more recent wines for a few episodes, and now want to taste a very important wine.
An old vintage, actually a great vintage, which vintage? The one during which the novel
Il Gattopardo by Tommasi di Lampedusa was published, the same year in which Mina was
discovered as a great Italian singer. In the same year Brazil won its first soccer world
championship, and last but not least this was the vintage when De Gaulle was elected
in France. Many of you probably just found out, we are talking about 1958, and more precisely
about a Barolo Marchesi di Barolo 1958. 1958, one of the greatest vintages ever, second
only to 1947 and in some cases to 1978. We are talking about Marchesi di Barolo, so of
a company that made the history of that specific area, a company which now works on about 40
hectars, which makes both traditional and more modern wines, but which really produced
excellent wines at those times, very traditional wines. Today we are going to taste this great
great wine. The bottle was opened about an hour and a
half ago, maybe two. Let’s start with the colour. A great surprise, since when we uncork
vintage bottles it is usually difficult and it is very rare to find a color which is perfectly
clean. This wine is clear like a young wine. The color is garnet red and brown red on the
outer part. I hope you can see it as well, my friends, it is a beautiful color. It is
incredible how, by just being a little closer to the glass I am pervaded by the perfumes
of this wine. The wine looks dense. The perfumes: fruits under alcohol, and then
smells like leather, and smells of…the perfume that one can smell when it rains on the leaves,
very good smells, always well balanced with this fruit, and also scent of rose. This nose
is really fascinating, I wish the video could transfer what I can smell, then we would have
perfect videos. There is also licorice, the wine is very complex. There is also the impression
of a wine that can still evolve, so the perfumes tell us that the wine is not close to its
end yet. It is perfectly good in terms of smells. In the mouth it is smooth, slightly
tannic, and the alcoholic strength is perfectly balanced with a good acidity, a complete wine.
In
the mouth there is a perfect match with what was foreshadowed by the smell, so a coherent
wine. We have a harmonic wine. At a second tasting the tannin is even stronger, a wine
which is still developing, complete, persistent, and with a beautiful ending. It is warm in
the mouth, and it is elegant, there is really a lot in this wine. I don’t know if I’m
able to express it with my words, everyone should have the opportunity to taste this
Barolo; certainly this vintage, 1958, helps a lot because I tried other Barolos by other
vintages and they did not reach this excellence. It is still evolving, the smell changes and
changes. Some licorice, also some coffee in the mouth, a complex wine, there should be
experts here to better describe it, I do everything I can to express it with my words. I am sure
when I say that until now, this is the best bottle tasted on Happy bottles.
Barolo Marchesi di Barolo 1958, I can even say 95/100, by your wine pusher.