2024 Piero Benevelli, Dolcetto d’Alba DOC “La Costa” Piemonte, Italy.
The 2024 La Costa Dolcetto d’Alba by Massimo Benevelli is darkly savory in style and has loads of rustic charm and delivers a quite serious performance, while being easy to love in its youth, especially with simple cuisine, like meaty pasta dishes. This medium bodied effort is classic Dolcetto with blackberry, plum, blueberry and cherry fruits, along with garden herbs, like rosemary, bay leaf and anise, plus a touch of leather, forest floor, delicate florals and some earthy tannins. The Benevelli holdings, according to importer Kermit Lynch, are mostly concentrated in the southeastern-facing hillside cru of “Ravera” in the deep southeast of the Barolo zone. The wines from Ravera have the distinction of combining the structural strength of neighboring Serralunga d’Alba with the concentration and richness of Bussia and the other crus further north, with the Dolcetto, planted in 1988, sitting on limestone with white and grey marl soils. This wine has an edgy crunchy nature, but is nicely rounded and pure with good fresh acidity, again making it best with food.
The Piero Benevelli estate was founded in 1978 that was a humble five hectares of vines in Monforte d’Alba, with his son Massimo making the wines, who started making wine when he was only 14 years old. Benevelli’s lovely wines, imported by Kermit Lynch, who now has quite a collection from Piemonte, deserves praise for it’s quality and style, they highlights the vintage, the place ,and grape to near perfection, and the basic wines are ready todrink now and often. Benevelli makes a superb set of varietal wines, be sure to check out this Dolcetto, the Freisa, the Barbera and Nebbiolo, but in particular look for their stellar and value priced Barolo Ravera di Monforte Cru, a go to of mine since I first tried their 2009 vintage. The Dolcetto d’Alba La Costa was traditionally fermented with temperature control, keeping the must cool and seeing about 7 days of skin maceration, with the wine coming off the skins about half way through primary. The Dolcetto, sees no oak, and was matured in the stainless steel tank for just about 6 months, before resting another few months in bottle, all to promote terroir and transparency.
($24 Est.) 90 Points, grapelive