Olek Bondonio - Roncagliette 2021
From Piedmont, we're drinking a bottle of Olek Bondonio's Roncagliette Barbaresco from 2021.
At some point, enough is simply enough. For us, being not exactly big Riesling drinkers at the moment, that point had partly arrived by Saturday evening at the Mythos Mosel weekend. But it also happened to the male half of the older couple staying in the same hotel as us, who was quite the Riesling fanatic. When we crossed paths yet again in Zeltingen late on Sunday afternoon, he just said that he was now going to lie down in bed in his underwear, watch some football and then, back home, pull the cork on a bottle of red wine. He’d had enough of Riesling for now. I feel that. Very much so, in fact, which is why we’re drinking red wine today too. It must be about two years ago by now that this bottle, well, this wine, rather, because it surely won’t have been this actual bottle, crossed my path on so many different, trustworthy channels at practically the same time, and was sung about in the highest tones, that I simply couldn’t do anything but pounce. That was either coincidence, or the coordinator of the operation had honestly earned this purchase.
After a career on the snowboard, Olek Bondonio has been making wine in Piedmont since 2005, now on something like seven hectares. Part of these seven hectares are plots in the Roncagliette and Starderi vineyards. Big names in Barbaresco. Or so I’ve read, at least, because the number of bottles of Barbaresco I’ve drunk myself has risen by exactly zero since the Sottimano bottle here on the blog. You don’t need to be a math wizard to put one and one together here regarding the number of bottles of these wines I’ve now drunk. That’s also why, as I read, the constant mention of Gaja’s Sorì Tildìn as a direct neighbour leaves me completely cold. Of course I know the name, but it’s so far removed from what we otherwise drink that I don’t even have the faintest flicker of hope of ever getting it in my glass. The vines, in any case, stand here on clayey limestone. Olek works minimally invasively and biodynamically. As long as no skateboard comes flying off the halfpipe in the cellar and into a barrel, at any rate. It’s fermented slowly in concrete over months, pressed in a basket press and bottled without fining, with minimal sulphur. And yes, I know that 2021 is no age for this wine.
For a moment, that threatens to come back to bite. In its first moments in the glass, the wine is nailed shut. Truly nothing comes to meet you. Swirling helps, thankfully. It stays a quiet wine, though, reserved, a bit of cherry Danish pastry, something floral, delicate, fragile. A few strawberries on sponge cake are in there too. Cool as you drink, just as delicate as it already was on the nose. Quiet, with terrific acidity. Until you slurp. Because then it grips. And properly so. For a while, nothing moves on the tongue at all. Fascinating, how it can be so quiet, tiptoeing, elegant, and then, with oxygen, dunk your tongue in tannin for three minutes. And once the tannin is there, it doesn’t go away again either. But lovely, it’s that even with fur on the tongue. A wine for at least three evenings.
We pour another glass, out of curiosity, and let it stand. An hour later there’s a different wine in the glass. We puzzle over it, look at each other, rummage through the drawers in our heads. It’s fragrant now, but we can’t put our finger on it. We go through the tea selection, through the sweets shelf, through the fruit bowl. But nothing wants to fit. And yet you can’t shake the feeling that you know exactly what you’re smelling. Orange peel maybe, red berries for sure, something ethereal, dessert, flowers, herbs, all and none of it. The fact that for two or three moments I was afraid this might come to nothing now feels ridiculously far away.
Day two needs no run-up. It picks up where it left off, and it’s still gorgeous. And full of tannin. There’s enough acidity to hold its own against it, but the fur stays. There are prunes, eucalyptus, herbs, wood. A meditation wine.
And on the third evening too, you can’t stop grinning. The wine becomes even more beautiful. It’s grown more velvety. No less furry, but gentler in its fur. The fruit now seems sweeter and actually fresher than on the other two evenings. Redder, juicier. It’s held on to the floral side as well. Yes, 2021 is no age for a wine like this. And yes, in five or ten years this may well sing much more still. But this Barbaresco is an experience even today.