2024 Bruna Grimaldi, Barbera d’Alba Superiore “Scassa” Piemonte, Italy.
Eve in such a difficult vintage, Grimaldi’s Barbera Scassa is a joy in the glass, maybe with a bit less concentration and a touch spicy, it still delivers a good complex array of flavors, dark florals, subtle earthiness and food friendly charm with black cherry, plum, cranberry and tangy red currant fruits, along with a hint of pepper, menthol, sweet and sour herbs, cedar and tarry licorice notes. This medium bodied effort has a silky backbone of tannin and a core of racy acidity, though refined by the extended barrel aging here on the Superiore, making it a delicious, while also giving a good nod to the limestone and clay terroirs from which the Barbera grapes were sourced, including prime plots in La Morra, Roddi, Diano d’Alba and Sinio, nestled around the classic prestigious Barolo neighborhood. Grimaldi, fast becoming a favorite and go to winery, employs a 10-12 maceration here, using 100% de-stemmed and hand harvested grapes, in old concrete vats for primary fermentation. After the wine is finished, it is then racked off to barrel, with the Scassa Babera d’Alba Superiore going into a combination of Tonneaux and large neutral oak casks for close to 15 months to mature. This 2024 is remarkably fresh and transparent, and while you’ll have to think twice about investing in top Barolo in this year, this Barbera is an easy choice to stock up on and enjoy over the next couple of years.
The Grimaldi family, as mentioned before in my prior reviews, has been in the Barolo business since 1957, but the modern version of this property really got started as a producer of fine wine with Bruna Grimaldi in 1990 and this label has gained a solid reputation over the last two decades. Now, winemaker Franco Fiorino crafts these wines with a passion for transparency and precision. I tasted this Barbera in Chicago at their importer’s (Massanois) trade tasting, along with a previously reviewed 2023 Langhe Nebbiolo, and I absolutely recommend not passing up the these Bruna Grimaldi offerings when you see them, especially the 2021 Barolos. These Grimaldi wines see all sustainably grown grapes, with organic farming now employed in all the vineyards the winery sources from, which has become very common in recent times to elevate the quality and purity of the wines, as seen here in the latest Barbera. Again as noted before, Bruna Grimaldi and her husband Franco Fiorino have turned the old school family business into an elite label, since bottling their first wine in 1999, and have only got better over that time. They have added significant vineyards and cru parcels to the collection and including a parcel in the coveted Bricco Ambrogio vineyard in Roddi, an exceptional, somewhat under the radar site. They now have ten hectares, which produces approximately 50,000 bottles a year, that all express the typical essence of the Langhe terroir, with Barolo, Dolcetto, Barbera and Nebbiolo d’Alba being the main focus, along with an exceptional Arneis white.
($29 Est.) 92 Points, grapelive