I did a message search for "Barolo" and turned up nothing?
Anyone like to drink Barolo? I had several bottles of Michele Chiarlo
1997. A friend told me that Cellar Tracker says to drink now. I thought this wine could hold up longer than this. I last sampled a bottle a couple of years back and it still had strong tannins and, I thought, would benefit from further aging. I was really looking at letting these bottles get beyond 20 years before drinking.Any thoughts?
JB
I drink as much Barolo as I can, but given the price of the wines, I don't drink as much Barolo as I'd like to ;-) '97 was a low acid year that, despite the hype it received early on in certain quarters, was never destined for long life. Add to that the fact that many producers were at that time toying with aging their wines in new oak, and there have been persistent questions about the ageworthiness of those wines. Still, don't take the prognostications on Cellartracker too seriously: I've had numerous wines that they listed as beyond their "drinking window" that were still quite alive and good.
Mark Lipton
Thanks for the comments guys. I really couldn't see the wine going down hill so much in the last couple of years. I'm thinking that I'll decant a bottle and serve it blind the next time my friend is over. He'd read the info on Cellartracker before he drank his bottle. I think people's perceptions are definitely influenced this way.
Besides, I serve most of my wines "blind" to our visitors. To me, it's a better way to judge the wine if no one knows beforehand what they're drinking. There are definitely surprises when purchase price is an unknown. The bad news is that I rarely get that experience since I'm the server.
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