Vintage 2008 from Piedmont, Italy

And so begins Vendemmia 2008, Italian for vintage.














Hello from my new home in Castiglione Falletto, a sleepy cobblestone town in one of the eleven communes of the official Barolo region. Tomorrow we may begin harvesting the Dolcetto grape but that remains to be seen as it may rain late morning and delay the onset of our red harvest.














Based on my conversations with various wineries, the 2008 vintage is not looking promising, especially for the early ripening dolcetto and barbera. The prospects for nebbiolo are yet to be determined but could still be very good. Overall, it will not be a stellar vintage. There was considerable rain in spring and summer, varying from two to four multiples of previous years. The need to spray cooper sulfite to combat disease has increased and one can see the evidence of blue leaves in the vineyards, from the copper component in the spray. The spray combats disease but minimizes the vigor of the canopy, increased by the quantity of rain. The incidence of chicken and hen, or millerandage, uneven flowering resulting from unfertilized grapes indispersed with normal fertilized grapes, is high from the cool weather. Quality producers have dropped selected fruit in the past few weeks to increase quality. Many berries are more swollen than usual.














Potential alcohol is measured in babo. 20 babo equals 14% potential alcohol, or 23 brix or 13 baume. Sugar is one of the criteria we use to determine a picking date.














I’m pretty happy with my new accommodations and especially with my new flatmate, Eddie from Australia. He is a winemaker from the Yarra Valley, Australia, at a state of the art facility called Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander. I can already tell that we will work well together.


















I feel grateful and lucky to be here. I love Nebbiolo. I am a big fan of Barbera and Dolcetto.