A
Note from Sergio
In early March,
I got an email from my friend, the Italian wine
writer, staunch naturalist, and infamous contrarian
Franco Ziliani.
Can you believe this?
he wrote. They gave Mascarello’s 2001
Barolo 84 points. He attached a review from
the nation’s leading wine magazine. Very
funky, the review said. Smells like a
warm room with two wet dogs in it.
Sure I can believe it,
I wrote back. What? Are you surprised?
Mascarello’s 2001 is,
in fact, a gorgeous wine, with not a hint of
damp puppy to it. Franco theorized that by giving
the same score to the Barolo as they had to
a $7.00 bottle of ’02 Yellow Tail Chardonnay,
the publication was making a personal attack
on the Mascarello family, who never gave any
credence to the press and often refused to even
send samples; on top of that, the magazine had
never understood Italian wines. Franco was furious,
and rightly so—but I wasn’t. I was
thrilled. I called my friend Robert, the US
importer of Mascarello. Robert is an unorthodox
fellow; he prays that his favorite wines garner
low scores, just so he doesn’t have to
interact with journalists and label chasers.
“Bobby,” I said.
“Congratulations on your 84 points!”
“Thank god for small miracles,”
Robert said.
Next, I went to my partner Perry’s
office. “Did you hear about the Mascarello
score?” I asked.
“I was just about to double
our order,” he said.
Finally, I called Maria-Teresa
Mascarello, the daughter of the late master
Bartolo Mascarello and the estate’s head
winemaker. “Maria-Teresa, you made an
amazing wine and got a crappy score,”
I said. “Congratulazioni.”
“I could not be more relieved,”
she said. “My father would be so happy
to know that our wines won’t be wasted
on the wrong people. Getting these wines into
the hands of the right people is the only way
to ensure that we’ll be here another 100
years. Those scores mean less than nothing to
us, you know?”
Did I ever. When it comes to
a truly great wine, sometimes a bad public perception
of the drink is the best thing that can happen
to someone like me. I learned that the hard
way, back in 2000.
It was a cool fall morning,
and I had gotten to work early. I was expecting
my first shipment of Bartolo Mascarello 1996
Barolo and I was too excited to sit around at
home. As soon as I arrived at work, my phone
rang.
“Where were you last night?”
the vice president of a major wine merchant
asked. He and some of the country’s most
influential buyers had met for a tasting of
1996 Barolos.
I told him I had another event,
but the truth was that I hadn’t needed
to try Barolos from the vintage again—I
already knew which ones I loved.
“Well, I’ll tell
you one thing,” the VP said. “The
Mascarello was terrible.”
“Terrible?” I asked.
“Dreadful,” he said.
“Like a rosé, and with no fruit.
Who makes these wines now anyway?”
I told him that Bartolo Mascarello
himself had become wheelchair-bound in recent
years. For a time, a man named Alessandro Fantino
worked in the cellar. Eventually, however, Bartolo's
daughter Maria-Teresa was ready to take over
as chief winemaker. Bartolo remained the inspiration
and motivation behind the estate, but Maria-Teresa
did the physical work.
“Yeah, I thought so,”
the VP said. I nodded silently and watched the
deliveryman bring the cases into the store.
As Perry took the clipboard to sign for the
order, I wondered if I had enough time to sprint
from my desk and tackle him to the floor before
he touched pen to paper. Instead, I sat still.
“I heard that these were once great wines,”
the VP continued. “But I figured that
someone new had started to make them because
they’ve really fallen from grace.”
“Well, nice to hear from
you,” I said weakly, and put down the
phone. For a moment, I was confused. When I
had tasted the wines a few months earlier, I
had known that they were remarkable. Nebbiolo
had thrived that year, and many Barolos—not
just Mascarello’s—reminded me of
how the 1989 vintage had tasted when I first
tried it in 1994. Eighty-nine is now widely
recognized as best year from the late ‘70s
to the mid-90s, and the ’96 displayed
that same restraint, that same complexity and
depth. That’s why I’d ordered 50
cases.
Suddenly I forgot my befuddlement
and panicked. My fledgling business couldn’t
handle this sort of loss. If I was wrong and
this guy and his friends were right, I might
have to close the shop; I’d be ruined.
I began to take long, deep breaths.
“Uh oh,” Perry said,
turning around. “What is it?”
I told him about the call; the
color drained from his face. Before we could
steady ourselves, my friends, a wine writer
and a buyer walked into the store.
“Aha!” the buyer
said. “I see you got in a bunch of ’96
Mascarello.”
I inhaled and exhaled, inhaled
and exhaled.
“I hear they suck,”
the writer said. “Open a bottle for us
and let’s see.”
We went to the back room and
uncorked the bottle. I watched their faces as
they took their first sips. Then I took mine.
“Too lean,” said
the buyer.
“Too austere,” said
the writer.
“Not velvety enough,”
said the buyer.
“Not round enough,”
said the writer.
“Ungenerous,” said
the buyer.
“Lacking in mid-palate,”
said the writer.
“Nothing there,”
said the buyer.
“You gonna try to return
the wines?” the buyer asked.
“We’ll see,”
I said.
“So,” Perry said
when they left, “what do you think?”
“It’s one of the
best glasses of wine I’ve ever had,”
I said. It was just as I’d remembered—a
rare gem. Like any great wine, it wasn’t
fully developed, but I could taste its potential,
and it was extraordinary. I realized what had
happened: The people who first tasted the vintage
were modernists; they craved fruit, jamminess,
deep color, readiness. And they had no context;
they’d only heard about the excellence
of a Mascarello Barolo, but they’d never
actually tasted one in its youth. They passed
their opinion onto their friends, and their
friends came in ready to hate the wine. I ordered
another 50 cases.
“I’ll make sure
all of my clients lay a case down,” Perry
said. “In a few years, we’re going
to make so many people happy.”
And we did. As I expected, the
’96 never received much press. What had
happened to me on a small scale had happened
to the entire vintage. Civilian opinion of the
wine was clouded by the preconceptions they’d
been handed. The year passed without much ado,
and in 2001, when the ‘97s came out, people
went nuts.
But after several years, everyone
had to recognize that the true splendor lay
in the ‘96s. These wines are in it for
the long haul, wines that have only just begun
to show what they’re capable of. Today,
it’s common knowledge that ’96 is
a fantastic vintage. I was at a dinner recently,
drinking the Mascarello Barolo, when I heard
a familiar voice. I turned around to see my
friend, the buyer, glass in hand.
“I've always know this
Mascarello was killer,” he said. “People
didn't get it back then, but man, these ‘96s
are smoking!”
This is the story I thought
of when I decided to offer this 2001 Mascarello
Barolo today. It’s the story I think of
whenever I see a deep and beautiful wine flattened
by ratings. It used to make me sad, but now
I see it as an opportunity to help place these
wines with the “right people” of
whom Maria-Teresa spoke.
The journalists who rate these
wines miss the essence of Italian wines—you
can’t judge them with scoring systems,
mechanically drinking dozens at once and expecting
them to be ready because you want them to be
ready. Rather, you have to comprehend how a
wine will bloom, how it will unfold into itself.
It takes more than a numerical breakdown of
mid-palate and fruit to predict that.
Remember the Mascarello ’89
I was comparing to the ’96? It’s
widely considered one of the best Barolos ever
made. And back when it came out in 1994, the
same major magazine sampled it. Like biting
into a handful of walnut scraps, they said,
with wet earth and menthol overtones to the
modest plum and prune flavors struggling to
be heard over the noise. Then they gave
it a 76.
My best,
Sergio Esposito
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