pop & pour

This was totally not Enzo's fault.

I had what I’m sure would have been a great wine to share with you tonight:  the 2008 Enzo Boglietti Dolcetto d’Alba from the Piedmont wine region in northwest Italy.  Boglietti is a renowned producer, and Dolcetto (literally, “little sweet one” in Italian) is a grape varietal that probably gets less attention than it should, one that routinely churns out fruity, rustic, soft, food-friendly, value-driven comfort wines.  I had the kind of day that cried out for that kind of armchair-by-the-fireplace wine, and when I poured the first glass, the juicy, vibrant purple colour of the Dolcetto instantly reaffirmed my selection.  I swirled the glass, took a few deep sniffs, and smelled…

Garbage?

It was flat out bad.  Rotting meat, sulphur, a mildewy, musty odour like a full can of garbage that’s been sitting in your garage for a week.  Rest assured, the wine was not supposed to smell like that; it had definitely gone off somehow.  In the interests of science and blog journalism, I had a taste (though it took some internal convincing to drink something that smelled that horrible) and found much less compost-esque flavours but no life at all in the wine.  It was flat, thin and bitter, with faded fruit and significant levels of acid.  For an ultra-fruity varetial like Dolcetto from a vintage as recent as 2008, the wine doesn’t taste like that unless something went wrong.  So what did? Read the rest of this entry »