1982 Bruno Giacosa "Santo Stefano" Barbaresco Riserva

Two 1982s from Bruno Giacosa are an unexpected but very welcome surprise. I have always adored this vintage. Both wines more than live up to my expectations. I am also quite surprised by how translucently beautiful the wines are. The 1982 Barbaresco Santo Stefano Riserva simply has it all. Deep, pliant and explosive, the SSR is also quite bit fresher than the Rionda. Here too, the flavors pack considerable brightness, with plenty of blood orange, cranberry, dark cherry and tobacco notes. Quite simply, this is a great, great bottle of the 1982 SSR. What a way to end the night. (AG)

Of all the Bruno Giacosa wines that I have drunk down through the years, the 1982 Santa Stefano Riserva is the one that I have had the pleasure to drink the most often, as this was the very first wine I ever drunk and sold from the Maestro back in my early days in the wine trade. I was smart enough to buy it for my cellar back then, but naturally, I did not buy nearly enough, and I am now down to my last couple of bottles. The wine is now fully into its apogee, offering up a superb and very complex bouquet of cherries, lovely spice tones, gamebird, a touch of red curry, a glorious base of autumnal soil tones, fennel seed and a topnote of woodsmoke. On the palate the wine is deep, full and marvelously complex, with a great core of red fruit, superb transparency, melting tannins and a very, very long, complex and perfectly balanced finish. A great wine at its peak, but with decades of life still ahead of it. (Drink between 2016-2045)