The four weeks I spent in Barolo and Barbaresco in 2024 tasting the new Barolos of 2021s and 2020 and 2019 Riservas that were to be released around April 2025 had already brought to the fore many outstanding wines. I spent another three weeks of the first four months of the year in the Langhe, and those tastings did nothing more but confirm my initial impressions. To cut to the chase: the wines of 2019 are classic in style; the 2020s creamy and showy; the 2019s elegantly austere, but each have their merits and charms and all can be thought of as at the very least, excellent Barolo vintages. It can be argued that which of the three will hold greater appeal to you will ultimately say more about you than of the wines themselves.

It’s not so common to find three back-to-back-to back vintages in Barolo that are all, each in their own way, so good. It follows that I cannot help but find it interesting to try and place this trio of vintages into an historical context; in other words, comparing the three vintages to two other mega-famous trios, that of 1988-1989-1990 and of 1999-2000-2001, something I have already broached in previous articles. For what it’s worth, I think that this most recent triad of wines is one of the best in memory and is, in some ways, both superior and inferior to the other two. It is superior to the very famous one made up of 1999, 2000 and 2001 because all three of the latest vintages have given generally better wines than the overrated 2000 vintage; however, I believe that both 2001 and 1999 gave more great wines than both 2019 and 2021. In comparison to the older triad, there’s nothing quite like the wines of 1989; but a case can be made that the wines of both 2019 and 2021 will ultimately edge out, in an ideal contest between years, both the underrated 1988s (here it will be very close) and the overrated 1990s (with few notable exceptions, it’s no contest). But the point is that, save for 2000, the eight other vintages deserve their place on a short list of Barolo’s greatest vintages ever. So you might say we are living in Barolo’s best of times.