2019 Dolcetto d`Alba Vilot, Ca` Viola

When Piemonte Dolcetto is as good as Ca’ Viola Vilot, it’s an absolute treat, living up to its name ‘little sweet’, although it’s most definitely a dry red wine. It’s a grape variety that can have rather dry, sandpapery tannins (perhaps that’s why it’s been losing out to Barbera in the vineyards), but it doesn’t need to, as the fine-grained silkiness of Beppe Caviola’s Vilot demonstrates.

Apart from a fine texture and medium weight, it has an arresting perfume of violets, anchored by the freshness of wet-earth minerality and appetising just-ripe black cherry fruit with a suggestion of blueberries and cream. The cream doesn’t reflect oak, incidentally: the wine was fermented with natural yeasts and then aged in stainless steel, hence the freshness and purity. 13.5%