A century of Barolo vintages — Fontanafredda

In the northern Italian vineyard region of Piemonte, two well-known Barolo producers have provided publicly available comments on 100 years of the wine vintages. Finding these online is not easy, and so I will be covering them in this blog.

Here, I have listed the chart from Fontanafredda (formally: Casa di E.Mirafiore & Fontanafredda S.r.l). You can read all about the estate and winery at the Fontanafredda web site (in both English and Italian).

I obtained this listing from a colorful printed poster on the wine-cellar wall at Wenngarns slott, in Sweden. There seems to be no other online version available. I have provided an analysis of the data at the end of the post.

A Century of Barolo 1906-2005

The 100 vintages are scored on an increasing scale:
    Poor, Normal, Good, Great, Excellent, Outstanding.
Comments on the vintage are provided only for the latter two categories.

Year	Harvest quality	Comments
1906	Good
1907	Excellent	Top quality Barolos with magnificently balanced component parts.
1908	Great
1909	Normal
1910	Great
1911	Good
1912	Excellent	Rich Barolos with great structure and an amply scented range of invitingly complex fragrance.
1913	Good
1914	Good
1915	Poor
1916	Normal
1917	Great
1918	Normal
1919	Excellent	Barolo of wonderful finesse and elegance, with excellent structure and long lasting flavour.
1920	Good
1921	Normal
1922	Outstanding	A superb Barolo throughout, full-bodied and well-balanced with great development potential.
1923	Normal
1924	Good
1925	Normal
1926	Normal
1927	Excellent	A Barolo brimming with character, structure and elegance in its bouquet.
1928	Normal
1929	Excellent	Harmony, intensity and great concentration were the qualities featured in a vintage decimated by spring frosts and hailstorms during the summer.
1930	Normal
1931	Outstanding	Generally exquisite sensations, from its intense, rounded nose, to its full, harmonious flavour and great balance on the palate.
1932	Normal
1933	Poor
1934	Great
1935	Normal
1936	Normal
1937	Good
1938	Normal
1939	Poor
1940	Normal
1941	Poor
1942	Normal
1943	Normal
1944	Poor
1945	Good
1946	Poor
1947	Outstanding	This is rightly considered to be one of the greatest vintages of the century, and this Barolo expressed all the power of its colour, bouquet and taste to the full.
1948	Poor
1949	Normal
1950	Normal
1951	Good
1952	Normal
1953	Poor
1954	Normal
1955	Good
1956	Normal
1957	Great
1958	Excellent	Well structured, crisp Barolo with a bouquet that developed a lovely ethereal complexity over time.
1959	Normal
1960	Poor
1961	Excellent	A classy Barolo, with body, warmth, structure, and a very ample, intense nose.
1962	Normal
1963	Poor
1964	Outstanding	Absolutely superb Barolo of incredible grandeur. The depth of the bouquet and fullness of its flavour came together with the well-ripened tannins that softened over a period of just a few years to give the wine a genuinely special balance and harmony.
1965	Normal
1966	Poor
1967	Excellent	A Barolo packed with intense, ample fragrances and good structure.
1968	Normal
1969	Normal
1970	Great
1971	Outstanding	Featuring magnificent balance, structure and depth of bouquet, this Barolo stands out for its elegance, very fine nose and ageing capacity.
1972		[Such a poor year for the nebiolo grapes that it was voluntarily declassified by all Barolo and Barbaresco producers.]
1973	Normal
1974	Excellent	A Barolo with a delicate, inviting nose and smooth, lingering taste.
1975	Good
1976	Normal
1977	Poor
1978	Outstanding	A dry, hot summer and autumn allowed a small crop to produce a Barolo of great structure and power, and complex aroma and taste.
1979	Great
1980	Good
1981	Normal
1982	Excellent	One of the biggest Barolos of all time in terms of body and character, with rich tannins and firm acidity guaranteeing a slow evolution of the wine over the years.
1983	Normal
1984	Poor
1985	Excellent	A Barolo distinguished by balance and harmony in its components, resulting from a hot, dry summer and autumn. Intense expansive bouquet.
1986	Good
1987	Poor
1988	Good
1989	Outstanding	Wine with a very intense bouquet and big, full taste. Imposing and demanding, it owes its long life to its concentration.
1990	Outstanding	A majestic, thoroughbred Barolo. Exhilarating and complex, with great structure, balance and substance, an expansive nose, luscious, warm, full-bodied flavour, and soft, thick tannins.
1991	Normal
1992	Poor
1993	Good
1994	Poor
1995	Great
1996	Outstanding	A Barolo of days gone by, with good structure and a lingering taste. A harvest delayed by an intensely cold spring and summer produced a wine with explosive tannic structure and a crisp
1997	Outstanding	Hot weather and early ripening resulted in a Barolo with a surprising harmony that highlighted the fullness and softness of its flavour. A wine of great balance, with astonishingly expressive power accompanying an extremely gentle nature.
1998	Excellent	Aromas of great freshness and finesse combine with a perfect sensation of equilibrium on the palate, produced by soft, ripe tannins matched by the warmth of the alcohol and nicely balanced acidity.
1999	Outstanding	A Barolo of great personality and structure, resulting from perfect ripening conditions for nebbiolo grapes. Complex on the nose and full-bodied in the mouth, with rich, ripe tannins providing breadth and depth.
2000	Outstanding	To close (or open?) the century, a Barolo with plenty of structure, a soft, full taste, and very intense fruit on the nose. A warm vintage and an early harvest for an elegant, round Barolo of exceptional balance and great personality.
2001	Outstanding	The vintage was distinguished by a wet, yet warm spring, followed by a very normal summer and autumn, with temperatures never getting too high. These conditions led to a harvest that started at the beginning of October, when the grapes were perfectly ripe (in terms of polyphenols too). A very concentrated wine, with powerful, soft tannins that fill the mouth. Red fruit and balsamic aromas prevail on the nose.
2002	Normal
2003	Good
2004	Outstanding	An extraordinary Barolo, open and radiant, with ripe tannins that are soft and smooth. A wine that stands out for its great balance. Fascinating, expansive, multi-coloured bouquet, and warm and savoury on the mouth. An "easy" Barolo to approach and appreciate: this is its greatness.
2005	Excellent	Mid-harvest rains left their mark, defining styles and selections. Focus on elegance, with plenty of acidity and dry tannins, but good concentration of fruit giving depth and volume.

Analysis of the data

Summary of the harvest-quality data for the 100 vintages:

Outstanding	14
Excellent	13
Great	8
Good	16
Normal	32
Poor	16
Declassified	1

The declassified vintage in 1972 is very unusual. Angelo Gaja’s notes on Langhe vintages include this comment:

The vintage was a disaster. It rained for 15 days during harvest. I believe that a bad decision was made. At that time, more than 80 percent of the harvest was sold to négociants (mediatori in Italian). Less than 20% was vinified by the growers themselves. The négociants didn’t want to pay for the grapes because the quality wasn’t there, and so they pushed the chamber of commerce to declassify the vintage. And it was declassified after the harvest. And so it was not possible to take advantage of what good fruit there was. It was a bad choice and it has never been repeated. The price collapsed and the grape growers were not able to cover their costs. They were the ones who suffered the most. Wineries can recoup their costs from other vintages. This decision was only made once and in my opinion it was a mistake.

I have shown the harvest-quality data as a time series in the graph, with quality converted to the scores 0-6. Each data point represents a vintage, and the pink line is a running average (it shows the average value across groups of 9 consecutive years, thus smoothing out the long-term trends).

The graph is generally centered on a score of 3 (= Good), with a distinct dip of poor vintages during the period 1935-1946. Indeed, 1947 was the only noteworthy vintage between 1931 and 1958 (a string of 26 vintages). By contrast, there has been a string of above-average vintages since 1994.

This recent improvement in quality compares very well to that discussed in Two centuries of Bordeaux vintages. This trend has occurred throughout the vineyard areas of Europe, and is usually attributed to the much warmer summers experienced since 1990, which has allowed the grapes to ripen more reliably (see the data in the post on Bordeaux).

In contrast with Barolo, the Bordeaux vintages also showed a general upward trend in harvest quality throughout the 1900s, rather than having the beginning and end of the century being similar (as shown above). In this sense, the two regions have been quite different. Bordeaux did also have poor vintages from 1930-1935, as in Barolo, but it had good vintages in 1945-1950, unlike Barolo.