Michele Mascarello 1971 Nebbiolo d'Alba

5/2/16 -

Our attention gets channeled in ways we don’t always perceive, or at least give a lot of thought to. Good wine might escape us in NY simply because there’s no local importer, which is not to say, of course, that we don’t have plenty of good wine to choose from!  In any event, we have almost no experience with the wines from Michele Mascarello - just a couple of tastes from old bottles that were fine but not very compelling.  And there’s nothing published on Michele Mascarello in the books we have - even the fairly encyclopedic Wasserman leaves them out.  Their website says that they started in 1927, and there are some nice photos, but it’s not super informative.  It’s easy to assume that they have some more famous cousins, but Mauro Mascarello (of Giuseppe Mascarello) says not, and for what it’s worth I haven’t inquired with Maria Theresa Mascarello.  Thus it came as a happy surprise that Michele Mascarello’s 1971 Nebbiolo d’Alba is a fine bottle of old wine, especially for $34.99.  We liked it enough to risk it all on 5 cases, and those went so fast, and were positively reported on, that we lost our minds and have bought a pile of the wine from a local cellar (local to La Morra, that is). It may not be as good as the Barolo, but it’s certainly right up there with anybody else’s 1971 Nebbiolo.  Jamie Wolff