See also Jancis's tasting notes.
Last Sunday night we held our eighth London wine tasting event at Caravan King's Cross with 100 keen tasters attending (two of whom had attended at least seven of our tastings, including new MW Tim Jackson). Our aim with these tastings is to give wine lovers a chance to pour roughly 40 wines themselves, hand-picked by our team. We are keenly aware that the London tasting calendar is extremely busy (see our free events calendar, for example) so we like to concentrate on wines that we think need more attention than they have enjoyed so far. The next event we have planned at Caravan is a tasting on Sunday 25 March 2018 devoted to comparing the 2016 and 2008 vintages of various Grosse Gewächse Rieslings hand-picked by our German specialist Michael Schmidt.
We've so far held a Sherry Night, two Brunello Nights, and four Barolo Nights in London (and a Brunello Night and two Barolo Nights in New York). When four years ago we began featuring Barolo, it was a relatively minor feature of the UK wine scene but certainly isn't nowadays. Barbaresco, on the other hand, arguably languishes in the shadow of its more famous neighbour Barolo, which is why Walter proposed this Barbaresco Night and presented us with 40 examples, very kindly and efficiently assembled by Marisa and Giusi of the Enoteca del Barbaresco.
Our enjoyment was much enhanced by the Riedel burgundy glasses supplied by Sensible Wine Services, who also looked after the wines until we were ready for them. Richard put together the tasting booklet, with details of UK prices and stockists where appropriate, and took the following photographs too. He is currently in the Rhône Valley tasting 2016s and had to make a special trip back to London to organise this tasting. We are very grateful.
As ever, JR took notes first. (Results here.)
Then the wines were laid out by commune ...
... and the stage was set.
Tasting began in earnest ...
... and was clearly much enjoyed.
On planet Barbaresco ...
... the wines are self-pour.
Some got straight to work ...
... as did the kitchen team.
Barbaresco goes well with pizza. But what doesn't?