Great tasting with Andrea Pieropan (and his 13 year old son in the background) of their remarkable @pieropanwines single vineyard #calvarino #soave showcasing its incredible capacity to age and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first release of this wine in 1971. This was a wonderful vertical tasting of this delicate, subtle white with its gentle creaminess (no oak) and seductive texture yet great capacity to age into something more complex. The tasting featured Pieropan Soave #calvarino 2021 (current release) 2017 (hot and dry year), 2013 (very good year not too hot) 2005(cool and wetter vintage) 1998, 1987!! and their new Calvarino 5 (multi vintage special release) as well as current release of their La Rocca 2021, their #amarone and the delicious sweet wine #reciotodisoave 2018.
All of the wines showed very well but the stars of the show for me was the new vintage 2021 #Calvarino delicious now but it will be even better in a few years, the 2013 which is absolutely stunning right now having the perfect balance between vibrant brightness and layers of complexity that begin to show with some bottle age. I also loved the 1998 second bottle – as with any older wines there is always some potential bottle variation but this second 1998 was really alive and kicking – fully complex with layers of cream, nut, honey, China tea, flinty-minerality and salty savouriness all combined in this delicate yet persistently taut framework. If you ever doubted that really great Soave could age you need to taste these wines. Plus the 1987 was still a striking beauty with its complex, mature flavours. All this and these wines are only between 12-12.5% and not especially high acidity or low pH. It is dry extract & complex minerality from old vines on hillside locations with volcanic soils that gives this capacity to age so well. Calvarino was the first ever single vineyard white wine in Italy Andrea tells us in 1971.
Wines presented at the famous London mecca for great quality Italian food @therivercafelondon Thanks to @liberty_wines for organising these ‘little jewels’ of events Grazie #andreapieropan, Nicola and David Gleave MW.
© 2023, Susan Hulme MW. All rights reserved.