Took this to a friend's to pair with lamb chops and pasta in a red sauce:
2020 Idlewild Barbera Lost Hills Ranch Mendocino County
Deep purple with bold and plummy dark fruits. There's an essence of barbera you can recognize (or so you tell yourself), but without the rustic exuberance and juicy red fruit of it's Italian cousins it drinks more like a clumsy cabernet. Didn't hate it, in fact it's a fairly good wine in most respects--tasty, balanced, very drinkable--but it's just not Italian enough and at $40 I would not buy again. (In fact I didn't buy it in the first place, after tasting at the winery I requested they leave it out of my club shipment and they sent it anyway.)
