1980 Bruno Giacosa Barolo 'Collina Rionda di Serralunga'

For many, the red label riserva Barolos and Barbarescos made by Giacosa are the equal of any red wine made in the world. He made them only a few times a decade, and they are not only fantastically complex, rich, powerful wines capable of decades of development; they are also endowed with that rare and magical sense of extra dimension found only in the greatest wines. So high were Bruno Giacosa’s standards that, over the decades, he deemed relatively few wines worthy of wearing the red label. As a consequence, his more typical white label releases often offer such soaring quality that we find ourselves asking why they weren’t given red labels. In such cases, the difference in quality may have been known only to Giacosa himself.

Giacosa is nearly as famous for his modesty as for the surreal character of his wines. As his legend grew, many writers made the pilgrimage to the Giacosa cantina in Neive eager to learn the details behind his wines. But they usually only received the simple response that he was a traditionalist. Giacosa always preferred to let his wines do the talking. “Winemaking involves a great many small decisions, each affecting the next. One can only hope to get them right, to capture what there was in the grapes to begin with” is what he told Gerald Asher in the early ’90s; this was about as far as he would go at the time in articulating his methods. Giacosa was somewhat more detailed in describing his approach in later years, yet what he revealed is not substantially different from what other producers do. The key elements in his work were a two- to three-week fermentation in stainless steel at moderate temperatures followed by three to four years aging in French oak botti. Surely, as with an Henri Jayer or Gerard Chave, the answer to what makes a Bruno Giacosa wine so extraordinary was contained within the man himself.