Review: 2023 Truffle Hunter Leda Barbera d’Asti

Pro tip: If you’re at a nice restaurant and want a crowd-pleasing red wine at a decent price, always order a Barbera. It will — and I can say this with 100% success over 15 years of discovering this one weird trick — always be outstanding, and it will be one of the cheapest wines on the menu.

An Italian Barbera called Truffle Hunter, with a cartoon of a man with a dog on the front label, would not normally be my suggested path forward on finding a great Barbera, but I’m not going to let preconceived notions inform my opinion here — so let’s dive in.

The wine at first blush is very soft, a fairly gentle expression of cherry compote and black tea, with some anise overtones. There’s a bit of balsamic in the nose — surprising for a 2023 release — and it translates to the palate fairly gently, giving the body a slight grittiness. Here, at last, some of the mushroomy character evoked by the name of the wine also emerges, though tart cherry notes dominate. The finish is increasingly earthy and acidic, those balsamic notes effectively scrubbing away some of the denser, earthier qualities of the wine. While Truffle Hunter lacks the herbal nuance of higher-end Barbera wines, it would be fine as a fine $11 by-the-glass option at the bar.

B+ / $20

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