2007 Prunotto Barbera d'Asti Fiulot

Back on the wine train.

Not long ago, I had my first-ever Barbera, and I quite liked it. But it wasn’t from Italy, it was from my local and beloved Livermore Valley. While I liked it very much, I wanted to try more Barbera, and more Italian wine actually from Italy.

Enter my good friend Gwyneth Hogarth over at what is easily the East Bay’s best source of Italian wines, Prima Ristorante (the attached Prima Vini wine shop is ridiculous). During a marathon session of Italian wine tasting, she offered up this 2007 Prunotto.

The wine is a rich ruby in the glass, a really great red shade. On the nose is this overarching “raspberry bush” sense. Ripe red raspberries mingle with a slight wood note and some greenery. But there’s something else there too, a note of fennel that kind of spices the whole thing up.

The Prunotto is a medium-bodied wine with good, balanced acid and tannins. Not a ton of the fruit passes through the nose onto the palate, but there is a more clear sense of the wood. Unlike the oak most of us are more than familiar with in wine, this is a lighter wood, a cedar note. And the fennel is still there, and even more wonderful.

All in all, this is a pretty excellent wine in my opinion. It offers up some things that I just haven’t found in California-made Italian varietal wines. And at around $15 per bottle, it’s well worth it.

Verdict: B+