Barolo Mags & Comtes Swag: Inside Wine Club Miami's Annual Event 2024

Piemonte took center stage for our biggest event of the year

Our last tasting of the year is always the ‘Annual Event’. We run things a bit different for this one, opting to invite our partners and friends to sit around the table and join the Club. With more people, we also go big with magnum bottles. This is what we drank:

• Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Rosé 2006 (Magnum)

• G.B. Burlotto Langhe Sauvignon ‘Dives’ 2022

• La Ca Nova ‘Montestefano’ Barbaresco 2021

• Roberto Voerzio Sarmassa Barolo 1998 (Magnum)

• Brovia ‘Rocche de Castiglione’ Barolo 2020 (Magnum)

• Vietti Moscato d’Asti (Sweet)

White table cloth. Bow ties. Pressed suits. Ravioli with black truffle. Beef carpaccio. Expert service. The night was purely Italian thanks to the team at Mamo Restaurant in Brickell. The year of hard work doesn’t culminate without Mamo’s Cru, which had the perfect private room to host our 13 guests.

We got started with a few speeches from co-presidents Matt Hege and Shawn Zylberberg, who gave out a gift for each member: Frederick S. Wildman Jr.’s book, A Wine Tour of France. Next year, the Club celebrates 20 years and we will celebrate by taking a trip to France and drinking our way through Champagne and the Rhone Valley. This book is homework! We also officially handed the presidency to Jeff Tenen, founder of Wine Club Miami.

The Comtes was an obvious favorite from the start. Pure strawberry took the reins with plenty of primary fruit power to lift the palate and get the body ready for a fun night. The color was deep pink, edging toward red, and provided all we expected from the grand Comtes.

With the starters we brought out the chilled Burlotto Sauvignon Blanc. An impressive, accessible white from a non-accessible Barolo producer, this Sauvignon was a big hit with our members and outsiders alike. It has a new wave of Piemonte energy in it with a tropical spice on the citrus lime driven white.

We stopped playing games and went straight for the Brovia Barolo dagger to pair with the black truffle ravioli. Although it was a young 2020 magnum, the ‘Rocche de Castiglione’ sub region of Barolo produces approachable, early drinking reds according to Vinous critic Antonio Galloni. We took him at his word and this wine showed very well. Does it need age? Of course. But did it impress? Oh yes. A red cherry, silky, fine tannin and elegant red that went down easy and stayed on the palate through the night. A lesson in the many personalities of Piedmont’s King grape: Nebbiolo.

We jumped back to Barbaresco and went from elegance to muscle with La Ca Nova, one of the world’s top producers of Barbaresco at a really good price. The entrees needed something bold and different, and La Ca Nova’s single vineyard bottle was loaded with forest cherry, plum, herbal spice and perfumed meatiness that made you want to sit with the glass for ten years and watch her grow up!

But we couldn’t sit on our hands and wait. We had the top wine of the night waiting in the corner at six big pounds: Roberto Voerzio Sarmassa Barolo 1998. One cannot understand Barolo without drinking an aged version. No other wine shows such diversion, such difference, such change over time than Barolo, and this bottle showcased that. Layers of leather, aged chocolate and sweet raisined cherries took hold of the nose while the palate offered endless waves of pinches of mint and old fruit riding a boat of clean acidity. Pure pleasure in a bottle. It made our night go slow, like we intended from the start.

2025 here we come!