Achieving winemaking fame inside one’s lifetime relies to some extent on leaning in, on the willingness to receive those journalists, importers, and consumers whose opinioning become market movers. Reclusiveness delays this recognition yet if the wines are good enough renown comes regardless, most often posthumously.
Lorenzo Accomasso may well be the best living European winemaker whose wines you haven’t tasted (those who have in fact tasted them universally lament how few of their wine loving friends have so much as heard of the wines). Lorenzo produced his first vintage in 1958 and since has been selling his micro-cuvées primarily out of his own cellar. Almost nothing is exported. He is notoriously kindly and warm should your knock be received - provided you’re not a journalist.
The vineyards are almost entirely within La Morra and Lorenzo’s style emphasizes the softness and perfume one expects from this Barolo sub-zone. Experience has helped me to see the wines more clearly and I now understand Accomasso typicality to be an essential finesse around which varying layers of fruit and tannin are interwoven. To peel back any wine’s exterior layer by layer, whether through cellaring or long decanting, is to reveal a delicacy of flavor and texture unsurpassed in the region.
Cheers,
Jason
