Boasso Franco, Barolo DOCG (Piedmont, Italy) 2016

 This is the best wine I’ve ever tasted from this family’s estate, and a remarkable accomplishment.  A very big, concentrated wine for a 2016, it nevertheless shows marvelous balance and proportionality.  Packed full of fruit but still very savory and complex, it is neither more prominently “fruity” nor “savory” in any obvious sense, as these characteristics announce themselves at the same volume aromatically and in terms of flavor — rather like the experience of listening to a piece of music when situated exactly equidistant between a pair of stereo speakers.  Similarly, there’s a lot of wood evident in this young wine, but also so much dense fruit that the wine doesn’t seem “oaky”, just bolstered with a very judicious dose of toasty, spicy notes that lend layers to a wine that remains exuberantly fruity.  The Margheria cru was the source for two amazing wines from the house of Luigi Pira in both 2015 and 2016, which I note here simply out of personal astonishment that this wine is even better than either of those, if only narrowly so.