I’m trying to remember the first year I visited this estate - 82? 83? In those days Einaudi was ultra-traditional and in the 80’s that meant erratic. While those days are often a bit over romanticized, there is no debate that great wines have always been produced by the Einaudi estate - most of the time. Rustic would have been an over-polite way to describe the old Einaudi winery of the early eighties, but today’s Einaudi wines are produced in a sparkling clean modern winery. While some may debate the plusses and minuses of that, you cannot debate the pleasures of their wonderful dolcetto wines and the fact that the ups-and-downs of previous decades are no more. The Dogliani region of Piemonte is well established as a premier dolcetto region and Einaudi’s are among the very best wines from this region. The 2006 Einaudi Dolcetto di Dogliani is as brilliant and brightly fruity as you could hope for, but offers a lot more than that. Under the dense black fruit is a hard edge that comes not only from the electric acidity, but from a delicious warm earthiness that makes this wine reach beyond the simple fruity offered by so many of its siblings. Drink this wine up now before it dries out.