2016 - Barbaresco Sori San Lorenzo, Gaja

The 2016 Barbaresco Sorì San Lorenzo is an eternal wine that will need 10-15 years in bottle to truly come around. Sorì San Lorenzo is often a big, virile wine. There is plenty of heft to the 2016, but at the same time, I also find an element of refinement and nuance that Sorì San Lorenzo has rarely, if ever, shown. Black cherry, cloves, menthol, licorice, gravel and incense are some of the many aromas and flavor that meld together in this dramatic and dramatically beautiful Barbaresco from the Gaja family. The Sorì San Lorenzo just explodes on the finish, with an array of aromas, flavors and textures that will leave readers weak at the knees. The 2016 is an outrageously beautiful, vivid wine of real gravitas and power.

If the Barbaresco Costa Russi expresses itself with purity and grace, the 2016 Barbaresco Sorì San Lorenzo struts out stacked and tall. It has firmer textural support and is not as timid or as withholding as the Costa Russi. The Sorì San Lorenzo site is located closest to the warm air currents that travel down the Tanaro River valley, and this vineyard site is always the first to ripen and be harvested. You get a stronger mineral note here with iron rust, pencil shaving and potting soil intertwined with the primary fruit, showing dazzlingly intricate complexity and depth. This vineyard site suffered in the 2017 vintage from some hail damage that hit on July 19. The quality of fruit is expected to be good, Gaia Gaja tells me, but yields will be reduced next year.

Barbaresco. From the Secondine cru. Just mid ruby. Perfumed raspberry nose of real vigour with notes of oatmeal and earth. This has a certain coolness and sleekness to it. Energetic raspberry fruit and bags of fine tannins and tangy acidity melting into one on the finish. (WS)