www.modernluxuria.com
Rare Wine Report WORDS BY JOE GURBA
Many Albertans outside of the drinks’ business don’t realize how good we have it here for wine selection. We live in one of the best wine markets in the world. Every week we see a new wave of lovely and limited wines appear in our shops, however briefly, until those in the know snap them up. This is a small sampling of the terroir driven wines you need to hunt down this month, wines made on small farms by true vignerons with that rare gift for gently translating nature into art. These wines are nourishing and artful records of another lap around the sun.
The Sandris missed the memo on modernization. Their wines are a time capsule from before modern upgrades transformed Barolo into the oakier brawny affairs they are today. Sandri’s wines are still as austere, pious, and rustic as the monks his dad bought the farm from in 1965. Elio Sandri farms just seven hectares on the Perno hill, a ludicrously small holding for today’s Barolo. When one hectare goes for over €1.2m, you must truly love farming wine not to cash out, live on a beach, and never shovel grape skins again. But Sandri’s passion has kept him in his farmhouse, the Cascina Disa. Sandri’s uncompromising farming — even requesting his small team stays calm and hushed when among the vines — results in character-driven fruit that needs no additives or removals to shine, just a saintly patience while it matures. The Riserva bottling is Sandri’s tête de cuvée from his oldest vines planted in 1937 on SW facing mid-slope. There are less than 300 cases made of his regular Barolo. No doubt far fewer of the Riserva. When wines are this rare and magnificent at once, I marvel that we have them in Alberta. If you foolishly open this now rather than ten to twenty years from now (as I did for this review) you’ll find all kinds of cherries over pencil shavings, potpourri, and hints of anise and mint and tarmac. The patient, however, will be rewarded with all the tar and roses and truffle notes great Barolo is famous for. - 46 -
