Field Trip to Piedmonte via the Heritage Wine Company, Pasadena

This afternoon we went out to see The Queen which we highly recommend and then over to the Heritage Wine Company in Old Town Pasadena for one of their weekend tastings. Heritage Wine is a great wine resource in the Los Angeles area, with a very knowledgeable staff and a great inventory, including hard-to-find German Rieslings, a nice selection of wines from Oregon, and a selection of Burgundies. You may not find many bargains here, but it is the place to go if you want excellent advice on special wine purchases.

Each weekend they offer special themes tastings in addition to the regular flights you can purchase (such as great whites, or interesting reds). The one we went to focused on the wines of Piedmonte in Italy. Tastings like this are great because they offer budget wine drinkers like me a chance to sip wines we might otherwise never purchase or taste (like Barolo).

There were six wines in the tasting, 2 whites and 4 reds:

NV Il Conte d'Alba Moscato D'Asti ($8.99)
2004 Fratelli Oddero Chardonnay($28.99)
2003 Icardi Pierino Barbera D'Asti ($16.99)
2004 Castello di Nieve Dolcetto D'Alba ($15.99)
2000 Giribadi Barbaresco ($49.99)
2001 Mauro Sebaste Barolo "Monvigliero" ($64.99)

None of us were that impressed with the whites, and the red that we liked best was the 2004 Castello di Nieve Dolcetto D'Alba, which I would give a rating of good QPR. It was a light bodied red wine, with a spicy, chocolatey taste. We felt it was a bit one-dimensional, and were not sure any additional ageing would improve this wine. This was in contrast to the Mauro Sebaste, which need another 2-4 years in a cool, dark place before the tannins balance out--not that any of us bought it to try the experiment!