Malvirà, Roero Riserva “Renesio”

Every so often, an importer collaborates with a producer to acquire some great back-vintage wine. It’s a “value-added” play on the importer’s part: Their restaurant clients appreciate the opportunity to serve a well-aged wine that was properly stored, and as for us, well, we love it, too! What’s not to love?Once we learned the incredibly reasonable price of today’s 2006 Roero Riserva from Malvirà, we scrapped for every bottle we could get our hands on: This is an estate that believes so strongly in the longevity of its wines that they reserve thousands of back-vintage bottles in their cellar at any given time. They periodically release wines like today’s in small “tranches,” enabling those of us without wine cellars to revel in the inimitable character of pristinely cellared Nebbiolo. Today’s wine is essentially equivalent to top-tier Barolo, and now that it has enjoyed more than a decade of bottle age, it is just now entering its prime drinking window—that point in its evolution when