[TN] Badiola 2001

Thanks for excellent notes. Just out of curiosity, you wrote " My only "complaint" is a lack of acidity, despite the CabSauv." Did you mean Sangiovese? Certainly Sangiovese is for the most part has more of a tendency towards acidity than either CS or Merlot.

Hello Dale, My thoughts were that Cab Sauv tends to give a certain acidity - never actually compared the acidity in Sangiovese to CabSauv as most pure Cabs we get tend to be either superripe jampots, or under heavy suspicion of acidification, despite common wisdom that CabSauv is fairly acidic. At least, common wisdom in the barbaric North.

This wine, which is mostly Sangiovese, with a little addition of CS and Merlot, had a fairly low acidity, compared to pure Sangioveses (from the Chianti region, or Rosso di Montalcino). Next to no acidic bite at all. Plenty woodwork though.

My suspicion was that maybe the cellar potential is less with so little acidity.

Not really wanting to stir the embers, it is still better with a meal than on its own.

Cheers

Nils Gustaf

There are of course a lot of variables, but overall my personal feeling is CS is rather low-acid. Sangiovese-based Super Tuscans like Pergole Torte always seem more acidic (hurrah!) than the CS based ones from the same vintage.

While there are exceptions, I would tend to think of red wine grapes as follows (this is off the top of my head, feel free to tell me I'm an idiot):

Barbera. Very high acidity, low in tannins Sangiovese. High acidity, medium tannins Nebbiolo Medium-high acidity, high tannins Pinot Noir. Medium-high acidity, medium tannins Cabernet Franc. Medium-high acidity, medium tannins Gamay. Medium acidity, light tannins Syrah. Medium acidity, medium-high tannins Petite Sirah. Low-medium acidity, high tannins Cabernet Sauvignon. Low- medium acidity, high tannins Merlot. Low acidity, medium tannins Grenache. Low acidity, medium tannins Dolcetto. Low acidity, high in tannins

Certainly there are low acid Sangiovese (97 Tuscans), Nebbiolo (97 Piemonte), PN ('03 Burgundy). Some Shiraz from hot climates will be very low acid, while Syrah from Northern Rhones from cooler years might be high acid. But I think these are pretty accurate to my experiences as to the grapes basic nature.

Barbera-Dolcetto-Nebbiolo blends can be quite interesting because of this!

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You are of course generalizing, and, your experience is greater than mine. However,

I have not found Barebras particularly high in acidity. If you remember, we did an Italian tasting of rather a lot of wines, including Barberas (we have a B' Alba as house wine for the moment)

Accepted. I'll remember that. Funny how I seem to be unable to notice something before it has been pointed out. When we did a Chianti and pizza tasting 6 weeks ago, I was struck by the acidity of the wines, but, since they were from the 60s, I thought that was archaic.

When we have had exams with blind tastings, the common wisdom has been to distinguish Syrah from CS by acidity - "Cab is more acidic" - and this has always failed! Except once when the Cab was an Oz from Wolf Blass which I believe to have been heavily acidified. Otherwise, the Syrah ha salways been more acidic than the Cab. So your viewpoint "wins".

I haven´t tasted many DOlcettos - I asuppose it´s not a wine that travels well or finds a huge lot of fans. I do remember, however, that we took a lesson concerning the reds of Piemonte and started with a Dolcetto, and there was consent that it did not live up to its name ('little sweet one') but was in fact rather acidic, almost aggressively so. Obviously more studies are called for. Fortunately, I am going to Piemonte this summer :))) - I doubt I'll use much time on DOlcetto, though.

Everyday I learn something new.

Cheers!

Nils Gustaf