2010 Maga, Lino Pavia Rosso IGT Barbacarlo

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Drinking Old Wine
Many of our favorite wines have been old bottles. While the great majority of wines are made to be consumed within a couple of years of their production, the relatively few wines that are intended to age can offer absolutely magical tasting experiences. We are pleased to offer older wine

Decanting Wine
The following will GREATLY enhance your pleasure with a bottle of older wine. It may sound like a hassle, but it’s really not so bad, and well worth the trouble. Basic Wine Decanting 101 There is nothing complicated or mysterious about this process; just follow these simple instruct

New from the Jura: Les Granges Paquenesses!
Loreline Laborde is living the fantasy many city dwellers have during rush hour: fleeing the city to live a quiet life in harmony with nature. After completing her formal studies in viticulture, Loreline left the bustling city of Montpellier to make wine in the undulating foothills of Tourmont, a vi

Broc Cellars Rocks!
Based out of Berkeley, California, Broc Cellars is an exciting winery, headed by winemaker Chris Brockway, that focuses on offbeat wines from intriguing and often much older vineyards. Their winemaking process uses only native yeasts with minimal doses of SO2 at bottling. These wines

Bountiful Bubbles from Bérêche
With the holidays upon us and gatherings of friends and family at hand, we are happy to remind you of the joys of Champagne at the table. New releases from our favorite growers are streaming in and we're positively giddy, as we taste the newest vintages and cuvées. One of the most exciting producers

Maga, Lino 2010 Pavia Rosso IGT Barbacarlo

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Italy is so rich and dense with life and culture that you only have to drive a few kilometers to find another monument, a new cuisine, a different landscape, a different dialect. Even with the internet and a mountain of guidebooks, there’s no substitute for a local guide — the obvious sources of information just can’t cover everything. Thus it was exciting when our friend Luca Mazzoleni took me to visit Lino Maga, who Luca described as “the Bartolo Mascarello of Oltrepo Pavese." Maga is of the same generation as Bartolo, and is similarly devoted to his idea of local tradition. On several occasions after our visit when I mentioned Maga to some Italian friends (more than one of whom called Maga “legendary”) it was clear that he is held in very high esteem, as a great winemaker, as a defender of the best of the past, and as someone who hasn’t yielded to what Maga himself referred to as “the globalization of wine”. Our visit was a great experience — most importantly I loved the wines, which are by far my favorite that I’ve tasted from the Oltrepo. The single-vineyard Barbacarlo is probably one of the most expensive Oltrepo wines, but when it appeared for sale in New York this year I couldn’t resist. Made from roughly equal parts Croatina, Uva Rara, and Vespolina, the wine is clean and it’s very distinctive. It’s dark and savory with very complex aromatics of rhubarb, plums, violets, and tea; it’s structured and tannic, and there’s a bit of spritz on the palate which gives lift. Chemicals have never been used in the vines; fermentation is spontaneous, in large old botti; aside from a couple of rackings no other processes are done — the bottled wine has sediment. After tasting at Maga, I could see my friend Luca’s point in drawing a parallel between Maga and Bartolo Mascarello; aside from being of the same generation and sharing the same philosophy of wine, Luca’s view was based on the quality of their wine: both winemakers reject flashy effects, both are determined to sustain the tradition and practices of their families and of their regions; both obtain authentic wines of the highest possible quality. Jamie Wolff & John Rankin

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