2011 Vietti Barolo Castiglione at Home and Away

Gary is the Italian red wine lover of the Duo. Amarone, Barbara d’Alba, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, and Barolo take up a lot of room in our wine cellar/crawlspace, and with good reason. Gary is also an expert pizza chef and eggplant parm maker, and there’s nothing better than drinking lusty Italian wine with home-cooked specialties.

Barolo is a particular favorite; one of two great wines made from the Nebbiolo grape in the Piedmont region [the the other is Barbaresco.] We bought a few bottles of the 2011 Vietti Barolo Castiglione last year after sampling the 2009 at the Newport Mansions Wine & Food Festival. While the 2011 ages in our basement, we enjoyed a sneak preview of that vintage at our favorite Italian restaurant La Campania in Waltham, Mass.

We ordered a 1/2 bottle of the 2011 Vietti Barolo Castiglione to pair with the world’s best veal chop and beef tenderloin. We recall a medium nose with some cedar, tar, and barnyard and luscious flavors with notes of intense dried cherry, plum pudding. The wine is rich, full-bodied and well-balanced with pronounced-but-tame tannins.

Understanding that 1/2 bottles age a bit more quickly [something about physics and oxygen, Gary told Lisa] we plan on cracking open the full bottle of the 2011 next year.

The 2011 Vietti Barolo Castiglione retails for about $50.