Tasting Notes
I hadn't tried Tom Myers' wines before this and I came away seriously impressed. Myers has worked with some of the best producers in Italy and France, still consults for a number of them, and is close with the Rinaldi family, so he is about as on the pulse as it gets in Piedmont.
He builds his wines around aromatic lift, the kind of Nebbiolo that jumps out of the glass, and the 'Preda' is exactly that: all floral lift, red rose and ripe aromatic red berry fruit, but without the power and grip you would normally expect from the region, landing somewhere much closer to Burgundy. The fruit comes from Preda in Barolo, but because Myers aged it for 12 months rather than the 18 the DOCG demands, it goes out labelled simply as Vino Rosso. That is the whole philosophy in a nutshell: he makes the wine each vintage calls for and adjusts the elevage to suit, rather than letting the DOCG rules dictate the wine. This is exactly my style of Nebbiolo, and I will be putting a bottle or two away in my own cellar. - Pete L
Cantina D'Arcy is the project of Tom Myers, a New Zealander working out of Barolo and one of the most exciting young Piemontese arrivals to land on our shelves in a long time. I got the chance to taste these with our rep last week and was completely blown away, wines that for me represent a direction in Nebbiolo more exciting than traditional Barolo, elegant and floral with silky, flowing lines that evoke the best of what I love about ethereal Burgundy through a Piedmontese lens. Tom arrived in Piemonte after a CV that reads like a who's who of the world's great growers, with stints at Comte Armand, Benjamin Leroux, Giuseppe Rinaldi, Marquis d'Angerville and Dr Loosen before turning up at Place of Changing Winds in 2015 for the winter pruning. The region is famously cautious about outsiders, but with a vigneron's language and an introduction via the Rinaldi family he eventually leased a single hectare of mostly old vines in the Preda Cru, nestled between the famous sites of Cannubi and Vignane at the end of the Bussia Valley. The big headline this year is that Tom has decided to remove his single cru Barolo from the DOCG rather than meet its 18 months of mandatory wood ageing, feeling it would compromise the vibrancy and purity of his 2022. It is the quality of what is in the bottle that matters to Tom, not what is written on it, and we couldn't agree with him more. - Pete L
| Product Type | Wine Red Nebbiolo |
| Volume | 750ml |
| Country | Italy |
| Region | Piedmont |
| Sub Region | Barolo |
| Winemaking Practices | Minimal Intervention |
| Vineyard Practices | Organic/Biodynamic |