Like every year, during 2024 I spent another month or so in Barolo and Barbaresco tasting with producers and on my own as many as humanly possible of the year’s new and recent releases. I got off to an even faster start than usual this year, in 2025, as I have already spent three weeks in Barolo and Barbaresco in February and April 2025; the good news is I came away from my tastings and visits with the impression that the 2021 vintage offers a superb lineup of wines that will thrill my readers and wine lovers everywhere. Add that the 2020 and 2019 Riserva wines, both from very good to excellent years, are also quite good, and you understand why I had a really fun time overall tasting away and talking to folks at the wineries. Clearly, there are times when wine tasting hundreds and hundreds of wines can be a real slog, but this year was not one of those times. For the most part, the 2021 Barolos are very classic wines (in some ways throwbacks to the wines of the 80s and 90s), the best of which magically combine fruit, power, age-worthiness and silky tannins. They embody the new course in Barolo, a reality made up of lighter extractions, generally fresher wines, and often, the use of whole bunches, in some percentage. Are there in 2019 the sheer numbers of unforgettable wines as there were in 1971, 1978, 1982, 1989 and 2001? Frankly, no: but the overall average quality of the wines has arguably never been higher. Or to put it another way, truly bad Barolo is a rare thing: in 2019, it’s rarer still, and the vast majority of wines range from very good to outstanding.
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