Winemaker Notes
The color is deep garnet red and the bouquet is fine and pleasing, with intense scents of spiced rose and licorice. The flavor is dry, warm, full bodied and balanced with pronounced tannins and a persistent aftertaste. A wine particularly adapted for aging.
The Barolo Bussia, with its structure and body characteristics, pairs well with dishes of meat, game and aged cheeses, typical dishes of the local cuisine, as well as with many rich international dishes.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This full-bodied red offers aromas of new leather, rose, camphor and forest berry. Firmly structured, the tight, focused palate offers dried black cherry, orange zest, licorice and tobacco set against a backbone of assertive tannins and bright acidity. Give it time to unwind and fully develop. Drink 2026–2036.
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Decanter
Claudio Fenocchio's largest site for Barolo is Bussia in Monforte, where his vines have an average age of 35 years,. He opts for long macerations and traditional ageing in casks. The nose is dense and reserved, with exuberant sour-cherry fruit. It's lush but burly, very tannic and powerful, with assertive and chewy tannins. It may be somewhat one-dimensional but it certainly shows force and personality. Very long. His Villero is almost as splendid in this vintage. Drinking Window 2022 - 2038
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
As one of the largest crus in the appellation, Bussia is a vineyard of many faces and many expressions. The 2016 Barolo Bussia is redolent of dark fruit, black cherry and tilled earth. Like the other wines in this flight of new releases, this Barolo is short on the small details and long on the broad-brush aromas. Instead of focus, you get a slightly obscured approach. I'd suggest a pairing with a succulent cut of red meat.
Responsible for some of the most elegant and age-worthy wines in the world, Nebbiolo, named for the ubiquitous autumnal fog (called nebbia in Italian), is the star variety of northern Italy’s Piedmont region. Grown throughout the area, as well as in the neighboring Valle d’Aosta and Valtellina, it reaches its highest potential in the Piedmontese villages of Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero. Outside of Italy, growers are still very much in the experimentation stage but some success has been achieved in parts of California. Somm Secret—If you’re new to Nebbiolo, start with a charming, wallet-friendly, early-drinking Langhe Nebbiolo or Nebbiolo d'Alba.
The center of the production of the world’s most exclusive and age-worthy red wines made from Nebbiolo, the Barolo wine region includes five core townships: La Morra, Monforte d’Alba, Serralunga d’Alba, Castiglione Falletto and the Barolo village itself, as well as a few outlying villages. The landscape of Barolo, characterized by prominent and castle-topped hills, is full of history and romance centered on the Nebbiolo grape. Its wines, with the signature “tar and roses” aromas, have a deceptively light garnet color but full presence on the palate and plenty of tannins and acidity. In a well-made Barolo wine, one can expect to find complexity and good evolution with notes of, for example, strawberry, cherry, plum, leather, truffle, anise, fresh and dried herbs, tobacco and violets.
There are two predominant soil types here, which distinguish Barolo from the lesser surrounding areas. Compact and fertile Tortonian sandy marls define the vineyards farthest west and at higher elevations. Typically the Barolo wines coming from this side, from La Morra and Barolo, can be approachable relatively early on in their evolution and represent the “feminine” side of Barolo, often closer in style to Barbaresco with elegant perfume and fresh fruit.
On the eastern side of the Barolo wine region, Helvetian soils of compressed sandstone and chalks are less fertile, producing wines with intense body, power and structured tannins. This more “masculine” style comes from Monforte d’Alba and Serralunga d’Alba. The township of Castiglione Falletto covers a spine with both soil types.
The best Barolo wines need 10-15 years before they are ready to drink, and can further age for several decades.