Got to go back to Alba

In one of the past Wine Blogging Wednesdays, the theme was wine from the Piedmont region of Italy. I had chosen a Barbera D’Alba because I had a deep trust of the grape whenever I see it on a restaurant wine list. Unfortunately it turned out that I had just had some good experiences in restaurants, or perhaps one bad experience at home.

So I decided to try another wine from Alba, a Dolcetto 2006 from Vietti. I have complained about wineries not having useful websites and other wineries that have done particularly good jobs of expressing the information that bloggers such as myself want to find. This wineries did a good job making it available on their website (www.vietti.com), but the content looks half finished.

A for effort, C+ for presentation. However, under further review none of the recent vintages are listed on the website. They still get some points though for having the website on the back label of the bottle.

Like most wineries in Europe, Vietti claims to have been making wine for the past four generations and was one of the first wineries in Italy to export their wines to the U.S.

I really should have tried this wine for my Piedmont post. There was a nice dustiness to the nose, with some rich sweet dark fruits like blackberry and blueberry. Definitely some oak used as I picked out smells of cedar wood and vanilla. My first taste was a little rough, and a put too tannic, with sour cherry and blackberry the predominant flavors. Then, as the wine opened more, there was a lot more juiciness to it, some of that lively fruit that I love.

After I tasted this wine I sat on this post for a little while. I walk into wine stores more often than I used to and as I do I start noticing what is on the shelves instead of just looking at it all as a wall of wine. The more I look the more I pick out this label and others as prevalent in the retail stores near me (of which I frequent quite a few). It is truly amazing how they start sticking out from the walls after you have tasted them and written about them. Makes this whole blogging thing worthwhile.