by Ian D’Agata

When it comes to Barolo’s latest trio of overall excellent vintages (2021, 2020 and 2019), one could hardly be blamed for getting the urge to paraphrase Dickens and refer to them as  “A Tale of Three Vintages”.

There is little doubt as to the vintages being, at the very least, good ones, ranging to potentially outstanding and memorable: however, the question that arises is just how good all three are. When a wine region, any wine region, has the good fortune to enjoy what are obviously three successive good vintages, the risk is always the same: inevitably, one or more vintages will get overrated, and/or one or two will be underrated. To keep things simple, the easiest and actually fairly accurate way of looking at the 2021, 2020 and 2019 vintages is to do what I have already described in my recent two-part Barbaresco article (Please see the Ian D’Agata Wine Review: —-), that being to consider them to be somewhat reminiscent of two other remarkable “vintage trios” in Barolo’s history: those being the vintages of 2001, 2000, and 1999 and of 1990, 1989, and 1988. The latter trio was the one that, in retrospect, was judged most correctly: right from the start, 1988 looked to be a year of classic, ageworthy and overall excellent if perhaps slightly unexciting Barolos; the wines of 1989 had “century year” written all over them, and that remains true to this day; the wines of 1990 fell somewhere in between the other two, seemingly embodying the best qualities of both vintages, though in retrospect this was the year of the three that was slightly overrated. By contrast, the next trio of vintages, 2001, 2000 and 1999 was always going to set up a certain portion of wine critics for a fall. Part of the problem was that these three vintages followed what had already been (wrongly) classed as outstanding vintages (the very disappointing and vastly overrated 1997s and the too tannic, fruit-challenged 1998s); but the bigger problem was posed by 2000, a hot vintage that gave initially fat, fleshy wines that always cause most critics to fall for them head over heels, despite usually a lack of refinement and questionable tannins. The likelihood of overrating 2000 was made that much easier because it was the “millennium vintage” (and therefore one that everyone and their sister wanted to talk and write highly about, and that even in spite of what was sitting in their glass). Today, we now know that while 1999 and 2001 are two of the greatest vintages in Barolo’s history and were mostly called correctly, 2000 was in fact overrated with many roasted wines that lacked lift (ie. they showed the effects of a hot growing season). Very few 2000s will go down in history in the top 10 vintages of any respective winery (Bruno Giacosa’s memorable 2000s are an exception to that general rule of underwhelmingness).

So the question arises: just how good are the 2021, 2020 and 2019 vintages?