100% Barbera; Idiot’s Grace Vineyard in Mosier, Oregon; planted 2003; Columbia Gorge AVA; 137 cases produced; grown in soil from volcanic ash and loess over old flood deposits; brought up in large, veteran barrels; 14.5% ABV.
I was prepared for Barbera to fail us every few years here in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe it just wouldn’t ripen sufficiently to be much fun to drink, bottled on its own. But the grape’s record here has been much better than expected. Admittedly, it is a sensitive interpreter of the seasons; the bottlings from our site display the scattered temperaments and inclinations of siblings from a large family. Certainly don’t expect the same thing from one vintage to the next.
The 2021 Barbera has an expressive, ripe fullness that is as savory as it is sweet. If we think of a spectrum that puts fruity notes on one end, and feral ones on the other, Barbera falls somewhere in the middle. It is concentrated like fruit paste, or maybe like something confected from whole plums and rosehips.
