Sommeliers in Italy: lazy or conscientous?

[vmilor]

In a very recent two weeks trips to some of Northern Italy's renowned resturants(I will post soon the results in the Italy section) I ran into an interesting problem. In several restaurants we have visited I chose a relatively young but quite intense and concentrated red wine such as a 97 Dal Forno Amarone, a 93 and 94 Soldera Brunella Riserva, 97 single vyd. Barolos from Voerzio and Sandrone, 95 Maschiarelli Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, etc. I have always requested these (not too cheap also) wines to be decanted. In all but one (Botteganova in Siena) place sommeliers did not want to do this. Because of the language barrier we did not really converse(although French helps more than English) but I guess they tried to explain me that it is better not to disturb the young wine and the Riedel glasses do the job anyway. I wish I could have experimented by having the same bottle decanted and not decanted. I felt that some of the sommeliers had never been asked to decant a young bottle and they tried to explain me that young wines do not have sediments It took some time to understand and respect each other, a problem one does not normally face here and in France. Anyway I would like to learn from all but esp. from the professionals about the justification of Italian refusal. Were they acting in good faith or were they simply not doing their job?

[Craig Camp]

Not doing their job. If you want it decanted it should be decanted. I have never had this problem and am a bit shocked. Not disturb the young wine? You can put young Dal Forno in a blender and not disturb it.

[mogsob]

Not only that, but unless the restaurant was going to provide accommodation and serve dinner to you in the morning, it is unlikely that these wines would have had enough exposure to sufficiently open.

This reminds me of some advice I got regarding a young Chambolle. I was instructed to open the bottle in the morning, decant into a wide base decanter and stopper until an hour before dinner. It worked, and the wine was wonderful.