The 2022 vintage was a difficult one in Barbaresco but the good news is that the wines have turned out surprisingly well, with very few truly lousy wines. At worse, some wines that are usually wonderful are less so in this vintage, but all are drinkable and enjoyable. As is always is the case in warmer and drier years, the ‘somewhereness’ of the wines is somewhat hard to identify, so differences between a wine from Asili and one from Montestefano are more muted (but are still there). I understand that not everybody out there gets as excited as I do in discerning the minutiae that make one Barbaresco a clear-cut example of Asili, while another one speaks of Pora, so I will tell you something more practical. Given it was a droughty year, and a hot one at that, some crus richer in clay soil and subsoil have fared particularly well in 2022: a case in point is Ovello, which is normally never the source of especially nuanced or extremely complex wines. But in 2022, some of the best Barbarescos of all, or at least many of a very good quality level, where all made with grapes from Ovello.
Another look at recent Barbaresco vintages
