CRITIC REVIEWS
Walter Speller
Serralunga d’Alba. Lustrous mid ruby with orange tinges. Cool and concentrated with a fine minerally note of liquorice dust. Huge depth. Still tightly wound, succulent fruit with bags of coating tannins and nervy, long acidity. Perfumed, complex and long and even a little more refined than 2013. Its length can only be measured in light years.
Antonio Galloni
The 2014 Barolo Riserva Monfortino is an epic wine, just as it always has been. Readers will surely be tempted to taste the 2014 now, but I would try to resist that, if possible. Usually, I recommend tasting young Monfortino upon release, when it has only been bottled for a few months and before it shuts down. Roberto Conterno gave the 2014 six years in cask (instead of seven), so the 2014 was bottled a year earlier, in the summer of 2019, which means it is now very much in the closed-down zone. Time in the glass brings out its inner sweetness and sensuality, but the 2014 is nowhere near as expressive today as it was from cask, or earlier this year when it was one of the highlights of a magnum vertical all the way back to 1970. The 2014 Monfortino is an epic, monumental wine in every way. Opening a bottle now, though, is not likely to be especially rewarding.