Crissante Alessandria Barolo Monvigliero 2020 & Ristorante della Cosa Vecchia
Sent in by "Albi Nebbiolo" from Piedmont, Italy
Welcome back, you.
You, who seek irreverence in the Parish of Reverend Reverence.
This week’s Wine Stain of the Week from the team at Indelible Wine Stain is a gaseous tale of a spray-stainable size.
There are, in the long and perfumed history of wine service, very few tools that have altered behavior quite as profoundly as the Coravin Wine Preservation System, or as we all call it: the CWPS… or “Kwerps,” for short.
Had it been invented, presented and implemented in the dining rooms of 19th-century Paris, the sommelier would have been accused of Majik and possibly chased through cobbled streets by an advancing brigade of dining forks.
Its premise is simple: insert a fine, hollow needle through the cork, introduce a proprietary gas, and pour the wine without removing the closure. The wine in the bottle is spared oxygen, and the guest can taste.
It has allowed us to sip a taste, savor a glass or, if used by a maniac - an entire bottle. As with many things, it has likely been described at some point as declassified ex-military technology, quietly passed to the masses… like the microwave oven.
The Wine
In the world of the Vinous, legend and reality stand toe to toe.
If a supermarket Sauvignon sways like a man in soft shoes at a wedding in Scarborough, then a “Monvigliero 2020.” enters more like a duelist stepping through theatre curtains to perform a John Wick-ian Opera.
Crissante Alessandria, the modest yet increasingly admired La Morra estate led by Alberto Alessandria, has built its name on precision rather than noise; and among the wines now emerging to the wider world, this inaugural Monvigliero arrives like an eagle feather in the cap.
Quiet, assured, and not easily ignored…and now, highly scored.
Monvigliero, a historic cru in Verduno, is known for producing some of the most lifted and aromatic expressions of Nebbiolo in Barolo. These wines, famously exemplified by Comm. G.B. Burlotto, tend to be defined less by weight and power, and more by perfume, finesse, and a fine-boned tannic structure that hovers rather than presses.
The Table of Guests
The gathering itself was no casual refueling stop, but a celebratory dinner for the Crissante Alessandria team, in Alba, after the long handshakes, bright lights and palate-fatigue of La Festa del Barolo in New York.
This is where growers, collectors and sommeliers had spent the final days of January speaking in that sacred international dialect, made up of cru names, descriptors and vintage charts.
And so, a table assembled at Ristorante della Cosa Vecchia, just off the old center, was not merely a dinner party, but a group of close friends.
They were, taken together, the object that became wine stained.
A highly tuned arrangement of woolen jackets, pale shirts, folded napkins, and human beings held upright almost entirely by happiness, pride and the promise of one final great bottle before sleep.
The Accident
What a night!
The meal had already done its work. Courses had come and gone, glasses had been emptied and refilled, and the table had settled into that quiet, satisfied state… the one in which a table feels fulfilled.
It might have ended there.
But at the close, as conversation softened and chairs leaned back, Alberto Alessandria, never one to leave a moment unresolved, asked for just one more thing.
Not a bottle. A glass. Something special.
From the list, he chose one glass of Barolo Monvigliero 2020.
After all, as restaurants support the wineries, so do they in return!
And so, naturally, the Coravin was summoned.
The Sommelier approached with the quiet confidence of a man performing a familiar ritual. The needle was inserted cleanly. The gas introduced. The pour was steady, controlled and precise - like a Samurai cutting with Katana.
But you see, at the end of a Coravin pour, the system must equalize.
A final release of pressure exists…it is a final puff of wine.
A brief, audible and if mishandled, expressive puff.
It is a detail though and the Coravin must tilt down into the glass to spray.
The glass was filled - and no!
The sommelier withdrew too quickly.
And what followed was a mist.
A fine Barolo spray, all over the table and the guests.
The wine stain.
No one moved. The sommelier froze. The table was silent.
He was red-faced.
Placed the Coravin down on the table, like a sword.
He adjusted it slightly, aligning it with the edge of the tablecloth.
Then he bowed. Once. Twice. A third time…deeper.
From his pocket, he removed his wine key. He unfolded the spiral.
He placed the spiral on the table. And then snapped it in half.
“I am no longer worthy of extraction.” he said softly.
No one spoke.
The sommelier briskly walked out of the room and off into the dark of the Alba streets, never to be seen again.
Some say he went to work for Coravin…the ultimate perfectionist.
The Wine Stain
“With a taste of crushed red cherry and wild strawberry, now filtered gently through table linen and shirt sleeve, the lifted rose petal of Monvigliero remains. The tannins, still fine and chalk-threaded, catch lightly on cotton and cuff before finding the lip. Hints of orange peel and bergamot rise alongside a faint mineral note of laundered tablecloth and a suggestion of wristwatch steel…a Barolo experienced not from glass, but from garment, surface, and consequence.”
There was, at first, a pause.
Then, as a few guests instinctively touched their lips…curious, amused, compelled…tasting what had quite literally come to them, Alberto leaned back.
He laughed. Not loudly, not with malice, but with an understanding that wine, however carefully handled, will always find its own way into the world.
“Well,” he said, glancing at the table, “at least everyone has had a proper taste.”
Laughter erupted. They went to find the Sommelier, but he had disappeared.