Gianfranco Alessandria Barolo
Piemonte, Italy
2004
$34.99 ($31.49 this weekend)
The past has returned, briefly. Recession has granted us a temporary return to days when high-quality small-grower Barolo was occasionally available to Italian wine fans for moderate prices. The 20th Century is back (at least for the weekend), but we get to keep our iPhones and snowboarding gold medals. What, you guys didn't get one? Maybe it's in the mail....

Nothing makes me look forward to coming into the shop as much as the promise of great, affordable Barolo waiting by the wine counter to greet me. Not as chipper as a Wal-Mart greeter, but more likely to let you eat all the osso bucco and wild mushrooms on toast you could possibly want in peace, without giving you a stare of reproach and concern. Stop by Friday and Saturday to taste this amazing red. Happy days are here again....

The Man... We have talented Piedmontese wine grower Mauro Veglio to thank for the existence of this wine. Veglio was able to convince Gianfranco Alessandria, his cousin, to begin estate-bottling fruit from his 5.5 hectares of vines. Gianfranco’s father had expanded this estate, founded by his grandfather in the 1940s, but both men had sold its fruit to other producers. Alessandria followed his father’s example until the late 1980s, when he began experimenting with bottling small quantities of wine. His first major release was in 1991. A 1993 Alessandria Barolo received Tre Bicchiere from Gambero Rosso, the prominent Italian food and wine publication. He was on the right path. The rest is history.

The Estate... Alessandria farms in Monforte, one of the hilltop villages of the Barolo D.O.C.G. This is the heart of the Italian Piedmont, a region considered by many in the wine community to make the best red wine in all of Italy. In 1996 Gianfranco completed an expansion and modernization of the winery’s cellars, upping production to a whopping 35,000 bottles annually.