Cavalier Bartolomeo, Barolo DOCG (Piedmont, Italy) 2016

 With all due respect, I have had rather inconsistent results with wines from this house, which has some seriously enviable vineyard plots but sometimes makes wines that seem over-ripe and overblown.  However, in a high acid year like 2010, the wines were fantastic, and that seems to be the case again in 2016, for the same reason.  Still, though the growing season of 2016 seems to have greatly benefitted this wine, it actually performs more like an excellent release from a hot year like 2007 than a 2016, so if you are after an understated, cool seeming Barolo, you’d do well to look elsewhere.  Yet this is an utterly delicious fleshpot of a wine, with rich, fleshy fruit that shows its ripeness in both the aromas and flavors, but doesn’t come off as stewed in fruit character, and doesn’t display any heat in the finish.  The designation provided for the particular wine I tasted blind in January 2020 was, “Altenasso o Garblet Sue’ o Garbelletto Superiore,” which could give anybody a migraine.  Some vintages have been labeled, “Solanotto Altenasso,” but based on the producer’s website, it seems likely that the same vineyard site is the source for a single wine that gets called different names from year to year, or for different purposes or markets.  Sorry for all that, but this is a stunning bottle of wine that will really prove to be a show-stopper for those who like the profile, which is “impressive” more than “stylish,” and “sexy” more than “beautiful.”