5.6.40
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Soldera's Case Basse 15/11/2006 (TNB)

It was a great pleasure to taste five wines from Case Basse recently with Gianfranco Soldera present to explain his philosophy. The wines are amazingly creamy, pure, bright, quite high-toned and while in fact quite structured and ageworthy they are also so silky that they are a pleasure to drink young too.

The wine is made from very low yields from fanatically cared-for vineyards and made very naturally before being aged in large old wood casks. This of course is the traditional way in Brunello, but like other favourite growers of mine (I am thinking of Chave and Fourrier, for example), he combines this very low-intervention, back-to-basics methodology with a very intellectual approach: every aspect of the process is carefully considered and he supports a lot of university research into aspects of wine production.

The downside is that these wines are ferociously expensive, but then so are Grand Cru Burgundies and first growth Clarets. We tasted mainly the Intistieti which is a separate vineyard from the Case Basse vineyard which is named after the estate itself. To judge from the one example of the other wine and Gianfranco's comments, the Intistieti tends to be more mineral and less open. I think it is that wine that I will be shopping for when I win the lottery.


Dinner added to Fine Wine Diary 03/12/2006   Return to top