Tag Archives: piedmont

Everything old is new again, and the milkman of yesterday have been reborn in the form of Detroit wine aficionado Putnam Weekley. In lieu of bottles of milk, Putnam is delivering bottles of wine as part of his new “Detroit Wine Truck” effort.

One week in to his delivery service, he’s done a number of interesting wine packages already, and the one I opted to try the first time around was the “Kings of Italy” consisting of a 2004 La Ca’ Nova Barbaresco and a 2007 Sant’Antimo “La Palazzetta” from Flavio Fanti.

Tonight, I opened the Barbaresco.

It’s smooth and refined, a bit more so than I expected. The nose is perfumy and pretty — like most barbaresco, it’s got a very feminine quality about it. The lightness is pushed aside by a potent prick of pepper. That shows strongly on the palate, where it’s tight, peppery, and astringent, but despite the tannins and at 13.5% abv, it’s a light and joyful wine, and there’s a real elegance to it. Some cherry and kind of a rose hip tea flavor. In 3 or 4 years, this might be the perfect Valentine’s Day wine.

Putnam wrote some suggestions for drinking the wine in a brief note that accompanied the two bottles. One of them was to fall more in love. I imagine that advice accompanied all the wines, but it seems particularly appropriate for this bottle.