Drinking the 2004 Coppo L’Avvocata
Normally, I enjoy pretty much every wine I try. Every once in a while, though, I have a wine that I’m just not all that excited about. A couple of years ago, it was a Di Majo Norante that tasted really strange and far too acidic. Last night, it was another Italian wine that just didn’t do it for me, which makes me wonder whether Italian wines are hit or miss for my quirky palate. Perhaps I simply need more experience with the Italians! Read on for the details….
We went to The Cellar Bistro with a couple of old friends…we hadn’t seen them in a while and it seemed appropriate to get a bottle of wine. Ken, the owner of The Cellar, suggested a few different bottles (including a bottle of 2002 The Gate Shiraz from McLaren Vale) but I settled on the 2004 Coppo L’Avvocata. Ken explained this bottle as the next step up from the basic Coppo release, although I cannot locate a more “basic” wine on the Coppo Web site.
The word “Avvocata” is apparently a reference to the Madonna, and I don’t mean Guy Ritchie’s wife. The original Madonna was the advocate for humanity, according to Wikipedia, so this wine has quite a distinguished name. The wine is made from 100% Barbera d’Asti grapes, which I believe is a first for me as I don’t think I have tried a purely Barbera d’Asti wine before. Barbera d’Asti is simply a fancy way of saying that the grapes are the Barbera varietal and are grown in Asti, also according to Wikipedia. I have wanted to try a Barbera wine for a while as I like Barolo wines that also come from the Piemonte region of Italy. This wine retails for about $14/bottle if you can find it online, and at $34 it was a fairly priced wine for a good Italian restaurant.
In terms of the food we ate with this wine, the selection was pretty homogeneous. We all had bruschetta and soup or salad, and for our main courses we mostly had pasta entrees. I had linguini puttanesca for the first time at The Cellar. It was quite good, just a little spicy as I like it. The Coppo L’Avvocata seemed to pair fairly well with the food, but to be honest I wasn’t crazy about this wine. Here are some basic tasting details:
- Aroma: A little unclear in the glass, a bit acrid and meaty with grape jam. Strange aroma.
- Flavor: Sour red cherry, dry, very acidic, flavor of grape stems…a little hot on the tongue too. Things didn’t improve too much with food, either.
- General impression: I didn’t care too much for this wine, it was simply too acidic and out of balance between the fruit flavors and the alcohol/acidity. However, my wife enjoyed it quite a bit with the bruschetta. That surprised me since her taste tends more toward the fruity and lush rather than the sour and dry. Still, I agreed with her and thought the best moment that this wine had was with the bruschetta.
I am certainly not going to let this one bottle stop me from trying other Barbera d’Asti wines. I don’t mean to say that I disliked this wine immensely or anything quite so strong. I’d simply say I would not drink this particular wine again, most likely, but I would love to keep trying other Piemonte Barbera wines, especially if they are this inexpensive at the store.