This wine was served blind to me at the wine shop. For you Piedmont-philes out there, you know him as a great producer of Barolo.

Aromas of crushed aspirin, tart cherries dominated the nose. The aspirin smell was very strong in the beginning, so I had to step away from the glass for a while - it faded away after 30 min of air time (highly recommended). The wine was extremely complex - the cherries, the slightly medicinal quality, with lots of other spices intermingling. My guess on the identity of this wine was that it was a "whacked-out Italian winemaker doing his own thing" (i.e., it had Italian wine written all over it, but no idea as to what it was). It had vibrant acidity, and that should have clued me in to Piedmont, but I've been fooled before with wines like Chaos. Definitely a vanguard of the old-world style Barbera, and not for everyone - an intellectually challenging wine for me.