On January 5th 2024, on kerinokeefe.com, Kerin O’Keefe posted an intriguing article entitled “Cellar Gems and Fails #3: When should you drink your old precious bottles of Italian wine?”

She wrote the piece based on bottles she’d pulled from her cellar on New Year’s Day. There were both hits and misses, but one of the biggest winners was 2001 Luigi Oddero Barolo Vigna Rionda, which she described in rich detail along with a 96-point rating. 

The Rare Wine Co. was actually Oddero’s original U.S. importer back in 2011, and the wine became an instant favorite among our clients, both for its quality and because it was that rarity of rarities: a Barolo from Vigna Rionda. 

Vigna Rionda is, of course, the vineyard that became iconic in the 1970s and 1980s, thanks to several now-mythic Barolos from Bruno Giacosa.

When we first offered Luigi Oddero’s 2001 in our newsletter in October 2011, we wrote, “Given Luigi’s old-school passions—and the wine’s character, which reminds us of the great Odderos of the ‘60s and ‘70s—patience is sure to be rewarded.” 

It's been a few years since we have offered the 2001, but Kerin’s review has proven our expectations right: it's a great Barolo Vigna Rionda that has only gotten better with age.

Now the really good news. Luigi Oddero tucked a few cases of the 2001 Vigna Rionda away in its library, and they've agreed to let us have them. We'll ship them from Italy in the next couple of months.

If you appreciate the beauty of traditionally crafted and perfectly aged Barolo, it doesn't get much better than this.