Barolo Secret Meeting in Pantagruel

There's this Nebbiolo club we have. Nothing official, just a handful of enthusiasts who gather when someone gets that particular itch - the one that only aged Piedmont can scratch. Almost always blind, everyone brings a bottle; nobody knows what they're drinking until the reveal. It's educational masochism at its finest.

This time, Vasyl went rogue. Hauled in a selection from Germany, curated with the kind of precision that makes you both grateful and slightly terrified. Four core Barolos, he said. But then the evening took on its own momentum - you know how it goes when the wines are singing and nobody wants to stop. One "just one more" turned into three more bottles appearing from nowhere, each more intriguing than the last.

Where else but Osteria Pantagruel? When you're drinking wines that have been sleeping for decades, you need food that understands the assignment and a room that lets you concentrate. No background music (well, except for distant street musicians), no theatre - just the wines doing their slow reveal.

The lineup that emerged was genuinely educational - from Giuseppe Mascarello's architectural Dolcetto (that drinks nothing like Dolcetto) through to Gaja's controversial Sito Moresco, a wine that shouldn't work but absolutely does. Twenty-nine years of Vigna Munie, twenty-four years of Vigna Rionda, experiments and traditions colliding across seven glasses.

What follows are the combined scores and my personal notes from our blind encounter with these bottles - some expected, some that made us question everything we thought we knew about Nebbiolo and its neighbours.

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