Do Italian critics not like Piedmont wine? Not exactly, it’s only that, for various reasons, many of the region’s wines are not properly reviewed.
There has recently been a little brouhaha over a ranking of the 100 best Italian red wines compiled by the magazine Gentleman, which cross-referenced the ratings given by the leading Italian wine guides and in which wines from Piedmont were not listed among the top wines and were less in number than one would have imagined.
There were various reasons for this. The first is that many leading wineries no longer submit samples for evaluation, especially by Italian publications. And the reason for this is that, because they sell most of their wines abroad, they are not interested in appearing in Italian wine guides. Added to this, they generally do not take part in public events, like Nebbiolo Prima, Grandi Langhe or Vinitaly, and thus it is difficult to have an opportunity to taste their wines unless one goes directly to the winery, as we do for our guide, for example. And last but not least, Piedmont producers make many different types of wines, in the Langhe they involve single vineyards, and so guides tend to review and highlight different wines from each other.
There is also the problem of how Gentleman compiled their ranking because if a wine was not listed in all guides it would be penalized because this would lower their average rating. Were a median approach used to rank the wines, perhaps even eliminating the highest and lowest ratings, and it was sufficient to be present in only one and not all the guides, then the standings would probably have been different. But this was not the case and so wines like Barolo Monfortino from Conterno, Barbaresco Crichet Pajé – Roagna and Barolo Falletto Vigna Le Rocche from Giacosa were not among the elite of the best Italian wines as determined by this particular classification.
For the record, at the top of the list was Bolgheri Sassicaia 2019, second was Montiano 2019 Famiglia Cotarella, third Torgiano Riserva Vigna Monticchio 2018 Lungarotti, fourth Rosso Piceno Superiore Roggio del Filare 2019 Velenosi and fifth Primitivo Es 2020 Gianfranco and Simona Fino. This quintet represented five different Italian regions: Tuscany, Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Puglia. They are all excellent wines to which we also gave high ratings in our guide. And they are all wines the quality of which all Italian critics can agree on. And this says something in and of itself.
PS: Gentleman also compiled a further ranking cross-reverencing the ratings given by Italian wine critics with those of four leading International publications and critics: Wine Spectator, Robert Parker (Wine Advocate), James Suckling and Antonio Galloni (vinous.com). In this list, Tuscany was the runaway winner over the other Italian regions with 14 wines among the top 20 and the top podium occupied Bolgheri Sassicaia 2019, Tignanello 2019 and I Sodi di San Niccolò 2018.
