Thursday, January 29, 2015

Franco Serra Barbaresco, 2010

During Restaurant Week in Kalamazoo, MI, most downtown restaurants offer a special three-course meal for $25. My choice this year, as last, was Zazio's Italian Restaurant not only because of the high quality food but also for the excellent array of Italian wines, by the bottle and by the glass. In 2014, I had a glass of the excellent 2008 Franco Serra Barbaresco that was a perfect match for my braised beef entree. This year: braised beef again, this time with the 2010 Franco Serra Barbaresco. If you find a good thing, stick with it.

Dark cherries and roses, lots of roses. Dark licorice tones too, though not as prominent as in the 2008. Classic Nebbiolo traits. Less bold, more elegant than Barolo. Medium bodied with tannins that are barely noticeable but still there in large quantities. Gets better and better throughout the meal. 2010 was recognized as a top vintage in the Piedmont area of Italy, and I think this wine has at least 8 to 10 years of positive development ahead of it. Even at $14 a glass, it's a good value. And it sells retail for about $23--one of the best buys around.

2 comments:

  1. Fred: Very good blog! I love the way you recommend wines from all over the wine producing world. As for value, I agree a $23 wine can be a value wine, but when I ask people what a value wine is to them, they almost always say under $10. As for me, I have had $80 wines that I deemed 'value' wines.
    There's a blog, another very good one, out of the NW which often has wines posted for less than $5, but the difficulty is reaching the locals with wines available to the hoi polloi!
    Either way, cheers to you!

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  2. Thanks, Dennis. Glad you like the blog. Actually, it's just a diary of the wines we drink every night with dinner. After 30 plus years, I have a pretty good cellar to draw from and am always up for trying new things.

    If you drink wine with dinner every night, you have to consider value. I'm constantly looking for bargains and some of them--but only a few--end up costing more than $10 or $15.

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