Wine: Wilridge Nebbiolo

Nebbilio, Italy's "wine of kings", is the varietal responsible for Barolo and Barbaresco (a Barbaresco was recently reviewed on this site) and is just starting to peek its head out in the Pacific Northwest.

Wilridge Winery, a relatively small winery in a Seattle neighborhood, has among its offerings a Nebbilio whose grapes are grown in the Red Mountain Appellation. The Nebbilio di Klipsun is a great wine at a reasonable price.

A few friends and I had a chance to enjoy a couple bottles of this wine with grilled veal chops and a variety of accompaniments. It paired very well with the food, which was rustic and relatively simple.

Wilridge's Nebbiolio has a handsome red brick color, a surprisingly floral aroma, and a somewhat tannic astringency that begged for a few more years of aging. Two of us detected different flowers in the bouquet, but all agreed the floral aroma was a delight. The wine's attack (that is, its intial impact in the mouth) was intriguing: it played gently and cleanly with our palettes. The aforementioned astringency proved pleasant when taken with food, but perhaps a bit harsh for casual drinking. It's complex and subtle enough to demand your attention with each smell and each taste. We paid $20/bottle.

While I had planned on just tasting a bottle, we enjoyed it enough that we had to open another. When we started to open the third, though, we actually switched to tall boy PBR cans. :)

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5