2024 Silvio Giamello, Langhe Nebbiolo DOC “Villa Gentiana” Piemonte, Italy.
It’s funny, sometimes the wines you buy for yourself and just enjoy with a causal meal, you kind of overlook, as I have never reviewed Giamello, a small Piemonte winery with outstanding value wines that I have drank for ages, well I’ll correct that here with their lovely Langhe Nebbiolo Villa Gentiana. This 2024 Silvio Giamello 100% Nebbiolo, which is from a humble small family winery that typically does less than a 1,000 cases a year, is beautifully dark garnet and ruby edged in the glass with a pure nose of varietal charm and terroir with a medium bodied palate to match showing of rustic cherry, plum, cranberry and strawberry fruits, dusting of dried herbs, rose petal, leather, minty licorice, cedar and chalky stones. Fresh and lively, this Nebbiolo goes down smooth with a vinous rounded textural mouth feel and a mild tannic crunch, making it ideal with meaty dishes, though perfectly happy with hard cheese or pasta. This wine offers remarkable value for the price, coming from a tiny parcel of vines, all over 40 years old, set on clay with lime-rich Marl soils, in the Barbaresco zone. When I last worked in a wine merchant shop, I always suggested this label to bargain hunters, with good results and I took my own advice often with Giamello’s offerings.
The Giamello family started in vines around 1900 with a tiny parcel on their multi-use family farm and endured world wars and tough times until the economy improved in the ‘70s, and Luigi Giamello was able to return to the domaine full-time. As importer Kermit Lynch notes, they were finally focusing more on wine production and eventually passing the reins to his son and daughter-in-law, Silvio Giamello and Marina Camia, who have brought world attention to this small Piemonte estate. This fourth generation, Kermit continues, continues to make wine the only way they can imagine: all vineyard work is natural and chemical-free, and the vinification techniques are purely traditional, which shows in the quality, authenticity and transparency of the wines, like this one. Giamello, who mostly does Nebbiolo and some Barbera, along with Favorita (Vermentino) and a micro bottling of Pinot Nero, does all fermentations naturally, using only indigenous yeasts, with this Villa Gentiana Langhe Nebbiolo DOC seeing a temperature-controlled fermentation in stainless steel lasting about 10 days. After which the wine, which is really a declassified Barbaresco, is, as Lynch notes, aged about 10 months, partially in large French tonneaux and part in classic old Slavonian oak botti. So, if you want a pedigreed baby Barbaresco for under $25 (bucks) then I highly recommend you chasing some of this tasty stuff down asap.
($23 Est.) 90 Points, grapelive