I couldn't get to Italy this year, but this wine is taking me pretty damn close.
I had worked hard to acquire Olek Bondonio’s Barbarescos, and after years of searching, I came across a few lots on the Del Posto auction this past July. With everything going on this year, I have had more excuses than ever to drink really well. Tonight I felt like I needed a really beautiful bottle of wine. I decided to open a bottle of Olek Bondonio’s Roncagliette Barbaresco 2016. This is the same wine that made me cry when I tasted in vat two years ago. Tonight it was showing better than ever. It completely transported me to the Langhe….
"Ciao Olek! Mi chiama Maddalena, e sono una sommelier da Aspen..." I announced on the phone with my typical spiel. My travel buddy, and co-founder of Winomad Productions, was with me in the Langhe for a very short three days of producer visits. She had met Olek Bondonio at ViniVeri (an Italian natural wine festival) a year ago and insisted that we see him. We were on a tight schedule so I asked Olek how long he anticipated the visit would last so that we could schedule our appointments accordingly. "Anywhere from 15 minutes to 6 hours" he responded with a nonchalant tone. “I guess we'll block off the whole afternoon”, I said to Elisabeth as I hung up.
The next day, running late as usual, we flew down the tiny street of Monforte toward Perno, swerving around the tight corners to descend into Alba and make our way toward Barbaresco. The rain pounded the windshield of our Fiat Panda as the little car worked hard to cling to the wet pavement as we veered around every hairpin turn.
It was a typical fall day in the Langhe - there was a thick fog that enveloped the panorama and just the hilltop castles that sat up and out of the fog were visible - they appeared as though they were floating upon billowy clouds of white.
For once, Google Maps brought us directly to Olek's house. We parked our Panda outside of the winery and Olek walked outside, talking on the phone. From what I could understand, he was talking to someone about the surf that day in Liguria. After hanging up the phone, he immediately informed us that he was planning to head to the coast to surf right after our visit, so we had better start tasting right away.
Olek definitely put out a surfer vibe with his blonde hair, pierced ears and tattoos on both arms.
His phone kept on ringing and he seemed flustered. As he poured a Barbera from the vat his phone rang again - "Piemonte sta diventando come Aspen!" he exclaimed with an irritated tone. He was referring to the current situation of the Langhe becoming overrun by tourists (especially obvious this time of year). “Non penso che stia portando niente di positivo. Anche perché per i turisti non c’e’ nulla.” There simply is not the infrastructure to accommodate the booming, and recent tourism that has taken over the Langhe.
After speaking with producers in Barolo about the challenging drought conditions of 2018, we asked Olek how he fared with such little rain over the past year. “We had the rainiest April I had ever experienced”, he said about the Spring in Barbaresco that year. 2018 was characterized by a wet Spring, hot summer and perfect harvest conditions. Unlike Barolo, Barbaresco has the moderating influence of the river Tanaro which has little impact on Barolo: “Devi capire che il Tanaro e’ solo 100 metri da cui. L’altra cosa da capire e’ che qua quando si parla di Langa - di Barolo e Barbaresco...e’ come da San Francisco a Oakland. Nel 2014 per esempio, li’ era piovoso, mentre qua c’era sole.”
The next wine we tasted was a 2018 Pelaverga that had just finished fermentation. He and another young, forward-thinking enologo Gianluca Colombo are currently the only two producers in the Langhe who produce Pelaverga outside the commune of Verduno.
Olek was born and raised in Turin, and the winery was part of his family’s vacation house where he spent all of his summers growing up. “Qua c’era il mezzadro. Io arrivo’ ogni domenica in campagna.” So the land, the vine and Nebbiolo have been in his blood since a very young age.
He practices a minimalist approach in the cellar and embodies a “naturalist” method of winemaking. “Qui c’e’ solo succo d’uva. C'è solo un grammo di solfiti a pigiatura poi niente. E questo vino qua, primo che sarà ad Aspen sul tavolo non si passa niente, né filtrato ne fining, niente. Aggiungo un po’ di solforosa perché se no Nebbiolo diventa accetto. L’aggiungo più o meno sui trenta di totale”.
Olek walked over to another vat, opened the spigot and released a beautiful pink-colored wine. “Questo e’ Starderi. Piante di 55 anni che lavoro io.”
This was the Barbaresco Starderi 2016. Starderi is a cru within the Barbaresco commune of Neive. The wine has an elegant feel and feathery texture because of the vineyard’s sandier soils. Olek owns less than 2 hectares of South-facing vines. (This is important to note, as some of the other top-producers of this cru have vineyards that face exclusively North.)
Olek rents his parcel within Starderi from a lady named Silvina. (He says that she would rather grow sunflowers than rent the land to some of the bigger wineries!) Olek unfortunately cannot buy the land from Silvina because two out of the ten family members (who all have partial ownership of the vineyard) refuse to sign off on the paperwork.
Olek expressed frustration about the difficulty of purchasing land in Barbaresco since a small producer like himself cannot compete with the outside investors and big wineries that have the money to buy it all up. Because of the influx of outside investment, the average price of land has increased exponentially, to unattainable prices for a small farmer such as Olek. He is saddened by the trend in the Langhe over the past ten years of historic vineyard sites being transferred into the hands of outside investors who know little about the land and how to capture the nuances of these vineyards in the wine.
"I am here for the Nebbiolo, not for the money.” Making wines his way, not the way other people want him to.
We finally moved on to taste his Barbaresco Roncagliette, the vineyard that surrounds his winery in the commune of Barbaresco itself - “questa vigna qua, casa mia” he said as he pointed out the window. He vinifies and ages three different parcels from this vineyard separately and then blends them before bottling. One of his future projects is to bottle the old vine parcel (planted 1958) separately.
Olek’s 2 hectares of vineyards within Roncagliette sit directly above Gaia’s (for the famous Sori Tildin and Costa Russi bottlings).
It was fascinating to taste the Roncagliette after the Starderi. They are both vinified in the same manner, so it is truly the vineyard that makes the difference. “Starderi e’ un terreno argilloso pero’ e’ un po’ più leggero perche’ e’ più sabbioso. Roncagliette e’ proprio argilla argilla, che piu’ argilla non si può.” Roncagliette has an underlying power and muscle that carries the wine. Starderi tends more towards a lighter body, refined tannins and elevated aromatics (almost like a Cannubi from Barbaresco).
“Starderi, qualunque cosa che succede nella vigna è sempre 10 giorni prima, sempre” explains Olek. Both vineyards share the same elevation and exposition - “La differenza nulla” - so you can truly see the difference in soils at work here. “Qui c'è più ciccia, piu’ corpa” he said as he took a sip of the Roncagliette.
We tasted through the three separate parcels of Roncagliette. He vinifies half of his production of Roncagliette in botte and half of it in cement so that he can employ cappello sommerso (submerged cap).
The first parcel we tasted was from the highest part of the vineyard - it was the most lifted and floral of the three with notes of fresh fruit (even cantaloupe!). The third wine we tasted was from the parcel with the oldest vines located at the lower part of the vineyard. This wine was in cement tank and was still on the skins using the cappello sommerso method. This wine had darker tones and more girth and tension, and more developed in its evolution with notes of china. “La stessa vigna, ma ti rendi conto che sono vini diversi”.
Cappello Sommerso is a traditional method of vinification utilized in the Langhe. Today rimontaggio (pumpovers) are much more common, but this was the traditional method of cap management and way of permitting the wine to spend an extended amount of time on the skins. (Insert picture of cappello sommerso here).
To practice cappello sommerso, both the fermenting wine and skins are pumped into a sealed vat in which wooden boards are held in place horizontally (by metal props) in the middle of the vessel. As fermentation continues, CO2 is released, pushing the cap (skins and seeds) upwards from the buildup of gas. The cap is essentially held in place as it is trapped beneath the wooden boards. The fermenting wine penetrates the cap as it is pushed upward by CO2, keeping the cap moist (you never want it to dry out). The top of the vat is sealed so there is absolutely no oxygen that enters that could spoil the wine above. (For this reason you cannot employ cappello sommerso in an open-top container).
Cappello sommerso has many benefits.
#1: Prolonged fermentation due to an anaerobic environment (lack of oxygen for yeast means fewer nutrients available). This slows down the fermentation immensely, resulting in a cooler and ultimately more delicate extraction: “Cerco di fare continuare il più lungo possibile”. Once the wine is completely dry (fermentation has finished), you can either continue to leave the wine on the skins or rack the wine to another vessel. Olek chooses to leave the wine on the skins post-fermentation but points out that it is imperative to monitor the wine at this point to ensure that volatile acidity does not develop. This brings me to the second benefit of cappello sommerso:
#2: More extraction from the skins. Most people assume that an extended time on the skins means a more tannic wine. On the contrary, after a certain amount of time, the cap acts as a sponge, reabsorbing the harsh tannins in the skins and seeds that it has released into the wine. The resulting wine will have more color and flavor (polyphenols) from the skins without the aggressive tannins that are sometimes associated with extended time on the skins. (In fact, some of the most elegant Barolos I have ever had spend an extremely long period of time on the skins, take for example Giula Negri’s Serradenari Baroli.)
#3 The cap acts as a filter, naturally decanting the wine. Once fermentation is complete and there is no CO2 holding the cap in its place, it descends, filtering the wine during the process. “Scendendo ti filtra il vino, che quando tu fai basket press, ti esce il vino che e’ limpido col vino finito perché il cappello si filtra da sola.”
Olek’s wines have an incredible energy and “purezza” - I find them some of the most aromatically expressive and refined examples of any Nebbiolo out there.
“I do it for the Nebbiolo, not for the money”.
We headed on our way as Olek took off for the coast to go catch the surf. I find that almost every visit has one major takeaway, and this one was a reminder to follow your passion for the love of it, and not to do something simply to please others. Olek’s Barbarescos are not for everyone, and he does not follow a conventional path. He does what is right for his terroir and for his wines with the utmost passion and commitment, and the result is a magical one.
As I finished my last few sips of the Roncagliette 2016, I closed my eyes and truly imagined myself in the Langhe on that rainy fall day back in 2018. Wine’s ability to transport us to another place and another time is truly magical. As the rest of my 2016 Roncagliettes to age, I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time to come.