2019 Fletcher, Barbaresco 'Starderi', Piemdont, Italy

2020 Fletcher, Barbaresco 'Starderi', Piemdont, Italy

$84.99

Terroir: The Starderi parcel is the cru’s most westerly section and the closest to the cru to the Tanaro River. Alessandro Masnaghetti, a wine writer with the most exhaustive account of Barolo and Barbaresco, states that it is one of the more sunny slopes and is among the most virile and solid of the entire Barbaresco appellation.

Vinification: After some trials including stems, Dave concluded that the resulting characteristics clash with Nebbiolo’s best qualities, so everything is destemmed. A pied de cuve is often employed for fermentation, and is comprised of yeast cultures from his vineyards. The extractions are gentle and sparing with typically one pigeage (punchdown) every other day, and only pumped over if the must begins to show reductive compounds (HS2). Fermentation time can run from two weeks to two months, and is made without temperature control. “Tannins need to be managed in the vineyard, not the cellar, so if they take a long time, I’m not worried about over-extracting them because they were picked when the seeds were ripe.” Nebbiolo is harvested late in the season, a factor that increases the fermentation length because the grapes are colder upon arrival. The first sulfite addition is made after malolactic fermentation is complete.

Aging: All of Fletcher’s Nebbiolo-based wines are aged in 300-liter, old-French-oak barrels with a minimum of ten years of use. This is interesting to note because the wines have a woodiness that appears to be an influence of younger barrels, but sometimes Nebbiolo and Barbera just naturally express this characteristic, and it’s hard to say why; perhaps it’s somehow organoleptically linked to their ingrained balsamic-like nuances. The use of smaller, more-porous barrels instead of larger botte would increase their oxygen and could accentuate this nuance—I’d love some opinions on that theory sent my way! The Nebbiolo d’Alba is aged for 13-14 months and the Barbarescos for 26 months. No fining, no filtration.

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