Andrea Oberto, Barolo (Piedmont, Italy) 2009

This wine will turn off a few purists with a slightly but notably stewed cast to its fruit profile, but even taking that into account, there’s no denying that this is one of the top sexpot wines of the vintage.  Impressively dark but hardly forbidding, this is richly aromatic and flavorful, with notable high-class oak riding up front.  The fruit is very ripe and succulent, and it just starts to turn stewy as the finish gets underway when the wood and grape tannins slap the wine back to attention.  That’s a welcome slap in this case, which is really saying something about the wine’s succulence, as this was the 189th young Nebbiolo I had tasted when it arrived in the lineup — not a point at which one commonly places an order for tannins.