What's Best with Barolo?

What would you serve with a $400 bottle of wine?

That’s something I don’t have to worry about, so I asked Luca Currado, owner/winemaker of Vietti, whose Barolo Riserva Villero 2001 sells for $400—if you can find it.

(If not, you’ll have to settle for Vietti’s estate-bottled single vineyard Barolos. Those from the 2004 vintage, due out this spring, cost only $130.)

Currado’s ideal Barolo menu starts with steak tartare or carpaccio. A salad with fresh greens and chicken breast or quail eggs and tomatoes would also work, he says.

The next course would be pasta, homemade and sauced with cream and fresh mushrooms.

The ideal meat dish would be grilled lamb or veal marinated with Barolo and then braised. Lamb is obviously Currado’s choice, because grilled rack of lamb accompanied Vietti wines at a lunch that Currado hosted at Paperfish in Beverly Hills.

A bowl of luscious seasonal fruits such as peaches and apricots is enough for dessert, accompanied by a sparkling Moscato d’Asti, some of which would be poured into the bowl with the sliced fruit.

If you’re a high-end wine buyer (I’m not. Severe rain damage and crumbling foundations have preempted my budget this year), the Vietti Barolos to look for are the 2004 Rocche, Brunate  and Lazzarito, each named for a vineyard, as is Villero. The 2004 and 2001 vintages are the finest in years, Currado says.

Why do these wines cost so much?  An acre of Barolo land  (Barolo is produced in the Piedmont region of northern Italy) is worth $300,000 to $400,000, for starters. Vietti harvests only .8 to 1.2 tons of grapes per acre, which adds up to about one bottle for each vine.

The Riserva Villero? Don’t even ask. Vietti has made this wine only seven times since 1982, and the little that is available is allocated to collectors.