The Iron Chevsky Wine Blog

Luca Currado of Vietti (on the left), my favorite Barolo producer at the event, and Iron Chevsky (me, on the right) holding the red wine of the year - Vietti Barolo Riserva "Villero" 2007 The 2015 Tre Bicchieri in San Francisco took place in February. The weather was spectacular, the setting at Fort Mason gorgeous, yet it seemed like few famous producers attended, and few bottlings per producer were poured, many of the wines ran out well before the event end. Despite my expectation to taste Brunello and Barolo from the much heralded 2010 vintage (because last year we tasted 2009 Barolo), there were but a handful of 2010's. Perhaps producers don't feel the need to promote their 2010's. Perhaps the famous brands of Italy are focusing on Antonio Galloni and James Suckling events rather than Gamero Rosso's. Whatever it is, I am left thinking that somehow this event is losing its importance to the big names, which is unfortunate as this has always been the top...

This year's Tre Bicchieri event in San Francisco continued the string of exciting annual tastings organized by the prestigious Gambero Rosso Italian food and wine magazine. I am proud to have been covering this event for many years now, as it is the top Italian wine tasting event of the year in the Bay Area. 415 wines made it into the "2014 Best Italian Wines" list out of tens of thousands sampled from across the prodigious land of Italy in the past year. For more details about Tre Bicchieri process and winners, see here  (html) and here (pdf). Most of the cult names were awarded, but not present at the tasting this time. In general, the amount and variety of wines poured per winery was the lowest I had seen. The explanation I got was that producers are no longer allowed to take any left-over wine out of the building, so many were quite conservative in how much they brought in, and quite a few ran out of wine well before the end of the tasting. 2009 Barolos on displa...

Iron C. and Franco Massolino with his incredible 2005 Barolo Vigna Rionda For the fourth year in a row I attend and document Tre Bicchieri - my favorite Italian wine tasting of the year in the Bay Area. Twenty-five years after its first appearance, the Gambero Rosso "Italian Wines" publication now reviews 2,350 producers and 20,000 wines across all of Italy. In 2012, 375 wines took the prestigious Tre Bicchieri ("three glasses") award, slightly fewer than last year's 402. This season I got a good look at a number of 2007 Barolos, but overall the representation from Piedmonte seemed thinner at the SF tasting (not in the Guide). It is almost as if many top producers didn't bother to show up. The warm, approachable and pleasurable across the board, 2007 vintage was in stark contrast to the austere and what they call "classical" 2006. I think both 2007 and 2005 are quite good and enjoyable now or soon, while the 2006 requires more cellaring, but ...