2016 Barbaresco, Muncagotta, Riserva, Produttori del Barbaresco, Piedmont, Italy

The 2016 Barbaresco Riserva Muncagota continues this tasting of frankly awe-inspiring wines. Rich, deep and super-expressive, the 2016 hits all the right notes. Black cherry, plum, spice, leather, licorice emerge, but only with great reluctance. The Muncagota is another wine in this range that clearly needs time.

The 2016 Riservas are without question the finest wines I have ever tasted from the Produttori del Barbaresco. That is evident from the very beginning of this tasting. Wines like the Pora, Rio Sordo and Muncagota that are typically open-knit and accessible, in relative terms, are brooding powerhouses. From there, the Riservas only get richer, deeper and more structured. I am too young to have tasted the 1978s as young wines, but the darkness and power of the 2016s reminds me of those Barbarescos, with the finesse and nuance of today, naturally. 

Harvest began in early October, which is on the later side by current standards. The Riservas saw five weeks on the skins, with submerged cap fermentation and then malolactic fermentation in steel, where the wines spent a number of months before being racked into 25 and 50HL casks in May 2017. No one who loves Piedmont wines will want to be without these mind-blowing, majestic Riservas. Prices remain exceedingly fair, making these some of the most reasonably priced, age-worthy wines anywhere in the world. Because of the very high quality of the year, the Produttori bottled about 20% more volume of the Riservas.

While waiting for those wines to come around, readers will want to have the 2017 Barbaresco in the cellar. It’s a very pretty wine from a year with more challenges. It will be interesting next year to see how the Riservas fared. Congratulations to Managing Director Aldo Vacca and his team for this breathtaking set of wines. The 2016 Riservas will go down as an epochal achievement for the Produttori del Barbaresco.

Drink 2024 - 2041

The 2016 Barbaresco Riserva Muncagota stands out in this group of nine for the slightly more mineral-driven definition on the bouquet and the bigger textural impact and structure of the mouthfeel. There is plenty of wild fruit and cherry, but the wine's aromas also veer toward crushed stone, iron ore, spice and candied orange peel. Thanks to integrated tannins, freshness, and an elegant dose of fruit or phenolic weight, you feel the impact on the palate. Fruit for this wine is sourced from vineyards owned by the Bellora, Lignana and Viglino families. Production for Muncagota in this vintage is 11,157 bottles.