Produttori del Barbaresco, Barbaresco Riserva DOCG (Piedmont, Italy) 2015

 I’ve basically given up on trying to guess the years in which Aldo Vacca will decide to make Riserva wines from the great crus in which this greatest of cooperative wineries has members with vineyard holdings.  I’m a bit surprised that rather hot 2015 was an “on” year, following lovely Riserva releases from 2014 (during which Barbaresco was almost miraculously spared from rains during harvest that hit neighboring Barolo) and ahead of 2016, which was a growing season so wonderful that I worry we may not see its like for many years to come.  But like I wrote, I’ve given up trying to guess what Vacca — a brilliant contrarian — will choose to do, opting instead to just enjoy and marvel at the results.  This wine from Montefico, which is often my favorite of the crus from which Riservas are made by Produttori, is polished and elegant rather than overblown or chunky, with an amazingly high ratio of complexity and flavor to weight, which is almost absent.  Seriously, this shows so many notes with so little weight that a top wine from Chambolle-Musigny in Burgundy is a better point of comparison than most other bottlings of Barbaresco, much less Barolo.  Befuddling perhaps, but no less beautiful on account of that.