St. Amant 2008 Lodi Barbera Tools of the Trade

This is my first US entry in the festival of Barbera and temporarily ends it (I'm out of fresh examples.)

Dark purple red, not quite opaque. Violet at the edges.

Surprising pencil-box oak is the most noticeable smell, then dark stone-fruit.

I haven't run across a Barbera with a significant degree of new oak in the flavor before. Plum and prune fruit, seems particularly sweet at the finish.

Not a bad bottle for $19.99, but a tad bit flat, it seems to lack some of the food-friendly acid I'm so very used to tasting in Barbera d'Alba and Barbera d'Asti.