Winemaker Notes
Barolo Bussia is intensely ruby red with light garnet hues. The nose is complex and precise: notes of red oranges and pink pepper lead to hints of small wild berries and roots. The palate is full and fruity with excellent structure and silky tannins accompanied by extraordinary freshness. The wine closes with a persistent finish that echoes aromas perceived on the nose.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Exciting minerality with a subtle, savory layer of grilled citrus and plums. Touches of iron and savory baking spices, too. This is bright and incisive, with nuanced flavors and dusty, crumbled tannins. Long, minerally and expressive already. A joy to drink now, but can hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Prunotto 2020 Barolo Bussia is very light and luminous in appearance with shiny ruby highlights. There is a note of sweet cherry, even candied cherry, that appears on the bouquet and just as intensely on the mid-palate. Bussia offers delicate fruit in this rendition without the extra brawn and muscle that is most often associated with this site. Instead, this expression focuses in on finesse and silkiness. Fruit comes from across eight hectares in Bussia, and 32,000 bottles were created as a result.
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Vinous
The 2020 Barolo Bussia is an elegant, beguiling wine. It offers all the intense spice and balsamic character typical of Bussia, with a bit more presence and overall body than the other wines in the range. It’s a combination that works quite well. This is impeccably done.
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.