Because of our deep history with wine, the standards by which we judge today’s efforts must be placed within the context of tradition. While we can judge California Pinot Noir on its own merits, we cannot understand or evaluate it completely without reference to Burgundy, its ancestral home. Burgundy will always be the benchmark for Pinot Noir, as it has been for centuries.

Just as there exist regional benchmarks for grape varieties or wine styles, there also exist some individual wine producers, and even individual wines, that manage to define the uppermost limits of quality or the epitome of a regional style.

The wines of Giacomo Conterno can all too easily be defined purely with superlatives. They are arguably the finest wines made in Italy’s Piemonte region, and are often described as the best wines made in Italy. Undeniably, they rank among the top wines of the world regardless of the criteria used to make that assessment, whether by reputation, critical accolades, marketplace demand, or resale value at auction.

Over time Giacomo Conterno has become the standard bearer and even the definition of what “traditional” means in the context of Barolo wines.

The Giacomo Conterno story begins in 1908 when Giovanni Conterno opened what we might these days call a wine bar in the little town of San Giuseppe. In those days if you wanted to have some place where people sat around and drank wine, you had to make the wine yourself. So Giovanni bought grapes from various farmers, and made Barolo, which were kept in small wooden barrels with spigots attached to them next to the bar.

Business kept up during the first World War, but Giovanni had to make do without the help of his son Giacomo who was sent off to fight. When Giacomo returned in 1915, he got right back into the family business, albeit with some new ideas. Giacomo had decided to start experimenting with making wines that were designed to age for a long time rather than the bright, fruity wines they were making for easy and immediate drinking.

That early experimentation quickly lead to a complete dedication to making the slow aging, complex and nuanced wines that Conterno still produces today, including the practice of taking the best grapes every year and making them into a special wine called Monfortino, which he began in 1920.

Giacomo was eventually joined in the business by his two sons, Aldo and Giovanni, though these two would end up having different philosophies about the future of Barolo winemaking. Giacomo’s estate was split in two for his sons, and Aldo went off to start his own winery which has become a standard-bearer in its own right for a more modern style of winemaking in the region.

Giovanni Conterno along with his son Roberto, who continues to make the wines today, would steadfastly continue the family’s traditional methods of winemaking, with one exception. While Giacomo Conterno achieved fame for the quality of his Barolo wines well before the middle of the century, these wines had always been made from purchased grapes. In 1974 Giovanni Conterno decided, reportedly on the advice of his wife and others, that the way to make better wine was to farm the grapes himself. And so Conterno purchased a 35 acre vineyard site named Cascina Francia planted to Nebbiolo and little bit of Barbera. Since that date, every Giacomo Conterno wine has been made from their estate vineyard.

The Cascina Francia vineyard rises steeply up a hillside to a height of more than 400 meters above sea level in the hills of the Piemonte region. It is farmed painstakingly by hand, and if you ask Roberto Conterno about the key elements of his winemaking he will insist that most of his most important decisions are made while the grapes are still on the vine. This includes the annual decision of which blocks of the vineyard will be made into the Monfortino reserve bottling (if one is to be made at all).

True to his word, when the grapes are harvested, Roberto Conterno does very little to them after they are stripped from their stems and dumped into barrels for an extremely long (sometimes up to five weeks) maceration and fermentation using their native yeasts. While the fermentation for the Cascina Francia wine is temperature controlled, the Monfortino wine is always left to ferment at its own pace and its own temperature, sometimes reaching levels that would cause less strong-willed winemakers to panic. But with three generations of family tradition informing his work, Conterno knows exactly what he’s doing.

After fermentation, the wine is poured into barrels where it sits for a long, long time before bottling. But these aren’t just ordinary barrels. In fact, they are perhaps better described as ancient oak oak swimming pools than barrels. The largest of them hold more than three thousand gallons of wine apiece, and are more than 50 years old. These monstrous vats impart literally zero oak influence on the wine and merely allow the wine to develop and mature with a tiny bit of oxygen exchange for the four to ten years that the wine remains in them before bottling.

Conterno’s wines are often considered timeless in every sense of the word — they age effortlessly for decades and they represent a purity of traditional winemaking that has remained remarkably consistent for almost a century.

While I have had one or two Conterno wines before, a tasting at the 2009 Aspen Food & Wine Classic provided me with the opportunity to taste a number of them side by side. Here’s what I thought.

TASTING NOTES:
2006 Giacomo Conterno Barbera d’Alba, Piemonte, Italy
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine smells of orange peels and forest floor. In the mouth it is highly acidic almost, almost too much so at first, but once the mouth settles in it offers lovely orange peel, pine duff, and red fruits in a long, smooth, silky package with virtually no tannins. The flavors linger in the finish but more remarkable is the memory of the texture of the wine. Score: around 9. Cost: $45. Where to buy?

2001 Giacomo Conterno Barbera d’Alba, Piemonte, Italy
Medium ruby in the glass this wine has an incredible nose of wet conifers in the rain mixed with the wet earth and green pine needles at their bases. In the mouth it is amazingly smooth, with a beautiful silky texture and a complex set of flavors that include cedar, orange oil, leather, and redcurrant. The wine has a fantastic finish. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $45. Difficult to find online.

2004 Giacomo Conterno Barolo “Cascina Francia,” Piemonte, Italy
Light ruby in the glass with orange on the rim, this wine has an amazing nose of wet stones, hints of dried apples and dried apricot aromas. In the mouth it is bright and juicy with fantastic cherry and floral flavors wrapped in soft, suede-like tannins. Complex with hints of spices, exotic woods, and flowers, the wine has an incredible texture and incredible length, soaring, wheeeee, through an airy finish that goes on literally for minutes. Score: between 9.5 and 10. Cost: $145. Where to buy?

2000 Giacomo Conterno Barolo “Cascina Francia” Piemonte, Italy
Light ruby in the glass with hints of orange, this wine has an otherworldly scent of anise, fresh bubble gum, and a sweet quality that eventually resolves to rose petal. Sweet on the palate, with an incredible weightlessness, the wine tastes of silky redcurrant, dried flowers… and…. there’s fruit there, but what the hell is it? Dragon fruit? Something exotic, and incredible aromatics. Light tannins grip the edges of the mouth light a velvet glove as the wine soars through a finish that seems without end. Tasted from a magnum. Score: between 9.5 and 10. Cost: $175. Where to buy?

2001 Giacomo Conterno Barolo “Monfortino,” Piemonte, Italy
Light ruby with orange at the rim, this wine smells of wet stones, old wet wood, and a bright green fruit smell like a ripe guava before it’s cut open. In the mouth it is an unusual combination of power and grace. Brightly acidic with tangy raspberry, redcurrant, and sour cherry flavors, the wine also has a deep resonance and tannic structure that show like a body builders bulk under his clothes. On the finish the wine is airy, and expansive, and oh-so-delicious. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $395. Where to buy?

1997 Giacomo Conterno Barolo “Monfortino” Piemonte, Italy
Light ruby in color with orange on the rim, this wine at first has a faint nose, which over time develops into a compelling combination of floral and mineral aromas mixed with wet wood and dandelion stems. In the mouth it is mineral driven and slightly austere, with flavors of wet stones, wet wood, and a granitic fruit that seems to seethe beneath the surface. This is a brick house of a wine, broad and expansive, but possesses less fruit than I might like at this point. The finish tastes the way my deck smells after a rainstorm, which is to say, excellent. Tasted from magnum. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $300. Where to buy?

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Lone Trees
Every week, Photographer Andy Katz sends me a new image to post here for your viewing pleasure. I never know what I’m going to get, but I do know that it’s going to be good. This week, when I opened his e-mail, something different happened. Everything got quiet, and I smelled freshly cut grass, bee pollen, and felt a warm breeze….

Amazingly, we are not lost, but I wouldn’t care if we were. Just as I give up and decide we have no idea where we are, another road sign appears that tells us indeed, we are on our way to Montepulciano. It hardly matters, though, because it is one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever experienced in my life. I have a gorgeous woman sitting next to me in this little rattle-trap of a rental car, and moments ago, as we snapped our picture standing in a field of orange poppies that stretched out across a Tuscan field behind us, I realized that this was the woman I needed to spend the rest of my life with.

“Yes!” Ruth says, triumphantly, “we’re going to get there!” And so we are, winding our way from the walled city of Siena to the picture perfect hill town of Montepulciano where we will wander the cobblestone streets, drunk first with love, and then later with Vino Nobile de Montepulciano.

Suddenly we round a bend and on our right, the hills roll up and away towards the horizon like the frozen surface of a turbulent green sea, undulating and chaotic except for a single oasis of calm. There, amidst the pitching waves of new wheat is a little gem — a tiny island populated by perfect cypress trees that we recognize instantly as the quintessence of Tuscany.

Ruth and I both immediately have the same longing: to photograph. In the emotion of the moment we naively believe that by fixing this image onto film we will preserve this feeling that runs through both of our veins, and capture this beauty that we have been swimming in for more than a week together.

“Oh my God,” she says. “We gotta stop and take a picture of those trees!”

I look at my watch, torn.

“We’ve gotta be close to Montepulciano by now,” I say, anxious about getting there in time to do some serious wine tasting.

“We can get a photo on the way back….” I hesitate for a moment as the urge to stop nearly becomes overwhelming.

“It won’t take more than a minute,” she says, almost pleading.

But my brain wins over my heart, and the hesitation never completes, and even at the limping pace that our little car can keep, the trees are passing behind us now, and the landscape continues to unroll in front of us, and soon the perfect day fills in the gap and smooths over the little seam that is left in our memory for lack of an image.

And the day was perfect. And the wine was good. And we were in love.

And by the time our little tin can of an automobile rounded that bend in the road again, it was dark. We were sated with yet one more fantastic meal, but not enough to avoid exchanging a glance as that little stand of trees swished by in our mind’s eye, and in the darkness outside.

We all carry with us many images, but some seem quite indelible, fused like vertebrae to create the spine of our experience — the bright line we can trace back through our lives without fail.

Ruth and I will always remember that moment, wistfully, and definitely with a bit of a chuckle. She says “that proves you should always listen to your wife, even if she isn’t your wife yet.”

And I say that I will never really need that photograph, which is the honest truth. It could never hold what I hold in my mind’s eye and in my heart.

But just the same, I know that she is absolutely, positively, right.

And now, thanks to my friend Andy, we’ve got a photograph of those very same trees.

INSTRUCTIONS:
Download this image by right-clicking on the image and selecting “save link as” or “save target as” and then select the desired location on your computer to save the image. Mac users can also just click the image to open the full size view and drag that to their desktops.

To set the image as your desktop wallpaper, Mac users should follow these instructions, while PC users should follow these.

PRINTS:
If you are interested in owning an archive quality, limited edition print of this image please contact photographer Andy Katz through his web site.

ABOUT VINOGRAPHY IMAGES:
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There are wine tastings, and then there are wine tastings. And then, there are experiences that completely transcend a bunch of tables with vintners standing behind them pouring their wines. I’ve been to a few “destination” wine experiences, some of which have been great, but none of which have been better than the International Pinot Noir Conference that takes place every year in McMinnville, Oregon.

Scheduled over a long July weekend every year, IPNC is one of the most relaxed and intimate wine tasting experiences I’ve had the pleasure of attending, not to mention the fact that it also involves some extremely high quality wines in a gorgeous setting.

One of the top draws of IPNC, apart from the idyllic nature of the program, is the heavy representation of Burgundy at the conference. Too many events in the San Francisco Bay Area that are focused on Pinot Noir might as well be subtitled “With a California Focus.” But despite taking place in the heart of Oregon’s Willamette Valley wine country, IPNC draws some top Burgundy producers, and occasionally, top Champagne producers as well.

This will be my second year attending IPNC, and I’m very much looking forward to it. If you’re interested, you can check out my coverage of the 2007 event:

Submerged in Pinot Noir: IPNC 2007
Wine Jeopardy at IPNC
Dinner Wines Day One
The Secret Life of Pinot Noir
Grower Champagnes
Al Fresco Tasting Notes from IPNC
Tidbits and Gossip from IPNC

This year’s program includes many of the highlights that made the 2007 program so impressive, including the rosé tasting, the al fresco tastings on the lawn, lunches in wine country, the grand dinner (one of the most impressive large scale catering jobs I’ve ever seen), the famous salmon bake, and more. Jancis Robinson will be the master of ceremonies this year, and will be joined as a speaker by David Schildknecht from The Wine Advocate, along with top winemakers.

If you’re looking for a compact vacation that includes some truly exceptional wine tasting, a beautiful setting, a mellow atmosphere, and fantastic camaraderie, you can’t go wrong with IPNC.

I’m not sure if it still applies, but for a while they were offering to give you a six pack of wines for $0.01 for each full weekend ticket you purchased. Give them a call and see if it still applies.

International Pinot Noir Conference
July 24-26, 2009
Linfield College
900 SE Baker St.
McMinnville, OR 97128

Tickets for the full weekend is $975, and always sell out. This year may be an exception, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t grab your ticket as soon as possible. On its face, the price is pretty inexpensive, and all the more so knowing the proceeds support a charity focused on offering health care to vineyard workers. You can register at www.ipnc.org.

The weather is generally perfect for this event, warm or even hot and sunny during the day, and cooler at night. Casual dress, sunscreen, and a sun hat and you’re set.

See you there?

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