Andrew Jefford introduces a tasting of 2020 Barolo shared with Susan Hulme MW and Michael Palij MW.
It was a year of acute discomfort among human beings—with Italy the first European nation to ask its citizens, on March 9, 2020, to stay home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile a season of relative serenity unfolded in the vineyards of the Langhe. Nature’s salve, perhaps? There were setbacks: a little frost in April, a pulse of downy mildew in late spring, extended flowering, then a localized clatter of hail between Verduno and La Morra in mid-July. Nothing too worrying, though; for the vines, it was a long and almost stressless season. As you will see from the scores and conclusions, our three tasters calibrate the grandeur of the vintage differently, but discomfort was there none: 2020 Barolo is both comfortable and comforting. And maybe more.
Winter 2020 was relatively warm, with sparse snow to recharge water tables; since 2019 had ended damply, no one was overly concerned. More worrying was the very early budbreak on March 20, around two weeks ahead of the long-term schedule, during a bright and sunny month. Many growers remembered a beautiful early-spring season of gently increasing warmth under cloudless and contrail-free skies. Astonishingly, less rain fell in the three months of January, February, and March than in any subsequent single month during the rest of the growing season.
The season began to shift gear from April onward, which was warmer than usual though still drier than long-term averages. From then on, summer was warm and lusciously moist: May, June, August, and eventually October were all significantly wetter than both the 2006–2017 average and the longer term 1929–2012 average (according to rainfall tables for the vintage that are given on Alessandro Masnaghetti’s BaroloMGA360 website). June aside, which was the coolest since 2006, the warmth rose steadily before easing back somewhat with the return of high pressure in September. The ninth month was also drier than the norm. Humidity levels had been high throughout the summer, so growers had plenty to do keeping mildew at bay in the vines, as well as reining back vegetative growth.
Slow, accretive ripening was never checked during this summer of tropical luxuriance, and picking began to get underway at the end of September. Then came the one true metereological mishap of the season: between 90 and 100mm (3.5–3.9 inches) of rain on October 2–3. A few growers with notably early-ripening sites had completed their harvest by then, but most then paused, resuming a few days later and picking on at a relaxed pace until the final third of the month; some picked via a series of different passes through the vines. Bearing in mind the early budburst, late-October picking meant an unusually long growing season, with ample hang time: an auspicious sign. The grapes were healthy—if large, with thinner skins than usual in these globally warmed times, and a generous pulp-to-skin ratio. In the light of this, some growers experimented with a proportion of whole-bunch fruit or ran extended submerged-cap macerations in order to stiffen the constitution of their wines. Contrariwise (and sensibly), many growers were chary of over-wooding their wines in 2020.
2020 Barolo: Perceptions and performance
With what results? Michael Palij MW sees 2020 Barolo as offering much more than comfort. It’s an “utterly alluring, perfumed vintage … just lip-smackingly delicious examples of the world’s most exasperating grape.” Michael’s remarkable scores (12 wines scored at 97 or 98 points, signifying “a wine of spellbinding beauty and resonance, leaving the drinker with a sense of wonder,” with a further nine scores of 95 or 96) underline his conviction that “2020 is a profound vintage with aromatic nooks and crannies none of the other vintages [he references 2010, 2016, and 2019 here] can boast”. Unquestionably a vintage to buy, therefore, for those sympathetic to Michael’s views.
Susan Hulme MW also “found plenty of joyful wines” but felt that these generally “mid-weight wines … in many cases lack the capacity for very long aging. It is a rather patchy vintage with different quality levels and different styles sometimes even from the same producer.” Personally, I tend not to fret about aging potential for Barolo, since one of the delights of this wine is that it arrives on the market in semi-mature form. Yes, the finest can provide evolving pleasure over a decade or more of cellar storage, but few insist on it in the way that young Bordeaux does. No Barolo reaches the market under padlock; no Barolo is ungiving without age. This is particularly true, as Susan’s comments suggest, of the affable 2020s, many of which are welcoming from the off: I only noted five wines where I felt a drink date commencing later than 2025 was in order.
I agree with Michael that the aromatic profiles of many of the wines were arresting and beguiling; like Susan, though, I sometimes felt a little deflated by what followed on the palate. Subtlety, layering, complexity, and nuance weren’t mightily evident; the grain and upholstery of these wines often seemed evanescent. Once the charm had subsided, one was left wishing for more gristle and sinew, more drive and thrust, more structure and resource. The least successful wines, meanwhile, were either simple or stringy. These are not inexpensive purchases, after all; few of us can afford a spread of Barolo buys, year after year; few of us can afford to be sanguine about flops. If you’re a customer looking for thrilling wines for special occasions, I would hold fire.
We always compare the performance of the different communes with our Barolo tastings (by compounding all scores for a single commune, then dividing by the number of wines submitted from that commune), and this year paused Serralunga’s customary dominance. Verduno emerged as the winner (278), with Monforte and (a surprise—though only two wines were entered) Novello in joint-second place (274). La Morra was fourth (272), Serralunga fifth (271—perhaps handicapped by its large cohort of 17 wines), while Barolo itself and Castiglione Falletto were joint-sixth (270). Blends brought up the field (266). (Note that for wines tasted by only two tasters, we divide the score by two then multiply by three.).
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