Tenuta Cucco, Barolo del Comune di Serralunga d’Alba (Piedmont, Italy) 2019

 This wine from the 2016 vintage put this producer front and center on my radar screen, and I was delighted to taste this vintage and to learn also that Tenuta Cucco is now also making Cru (or MGA) wines from Serralunga.  But before we get to those, this wine has absolutely not lost even a sliver of quality because single-site wines were brought into play, and this 2019 is — to my admitted surprise — at least as good as the 2016 was (and remains…I bought that vintage, and tasted it alongside all the 2019s).  This single village wine shows all the depth and richness and power that one would expect from Serralunga, but not because the fruit was over-ripened or juked up with oak.  Although a formidable Nebbiolo-based wine, it also shows excellent purity and fine acidic balance, with wonderful savory accents of carpaccio, spices and leather.  It is now more open and expressive than its single-site stablemates, but there’s no reason to believe that it will have a much shorter lifespan, as it not only remained very fresh and solid 24 hours after being opened and double-decanted, but was actually better than when tasted the night before.  I may very well have under-scored this.  Bloody impressive.