As Barolo fans are well-aware by now, the 2013 vintage in Piedmont has gotten raves from critics and producers alike. It started out shaky, with a wet Spring that delayed the budding of the vines, but the Summer that followed was moderate and dry, resulting in a late harvest and wines of exceptional aromatic complexity and balance.
Many have compared the wines of 2013 to those of 2010—wines characterized by completeness and elegance—and we’re just now starting to see actual bottled evidence. The 2013 “Bussia” Barolo from Aldo Conterno recently arrived in our warehouse, and I suspect it’ll be heading back out the door quickly, to the cellars of our shrewdest collectors.
The Conterno family’s roots in the Barolo village of Monforte d’Alba go back to the 19th century, and it was Aldo’s father, Giacomo, who was among the first to commercialize bottled Barolo back in the 1920s and ‘30s. The Giacomo Conterno estate, still one of Barolo’s most iconic, is where Aldo and his brother, Giovanni, cut their wine teeth in the ‘50s and ‘60s—but in 1969 Aldo Conterno struck out on his own, purchasing a farm called “Il Favot” in Monforte and leaving Giovanni to run Giacomo Conterno. While the Giacomo Conterno winery was/is based in Monforte, its legendary ‘Francia’ vineyard was/is in the neighboring village of Serralunga; Aldo’s vineyards were/are in the ‘Bussia’ hamlet of Monforte, with a little more of a full-south exposure than the west-facing Francia. Traditionally, the Aldo Conterno Barolos are perhaps a little burlier and darkly fruited than the earthy, ethereal Giacomo Conterno wines, though both produce some of the longest-lived wine in the zone.
Aldo Conterno passed away in 2012, but the estate is ably run by his sons, Franco, Stefano, and Giacomo. The beating heart of the operation, of course, is the “Bussia” vineyard in Monforte, one of the largest and best-known sites in all of Barolo, known for its bluish marl soils rich in calcium carbonate and iron. Among the Conterno holdings concentrated in this ‘grand cru’ are the single vineyards “Cicala,” “Colonello,” and “Romirasco”—three small, contiguous parcels the sit near the crest of the hill, from which the Conterno family bottles single-vineyard wines. This wine is a blend of numerous different vineyard sites on Bussia—a classic ‘base-level’ Barolo—incorporating fruit from vines no less than 20 years old. It was aged in large, Slavonian oak casks for 26 months, then refined in bottle for another year before release (the minimum aging for Barolo, by law, is 38 months, with a minimum of 18 in oak barrels).
As Conterno drinkers know, these are powerful wines that can be forbidding in their youth, and while the 2013 “Bussia” is showing exquisite balance and ripe, refined tannins, this is still a wine to lay down for a while. In the glass it’s a reflective crimson/ruby moving to slight hints of orange at the rim, with a characteristically brooding nose of dried cherry, wild strawberry, tobacco, blood orange peel, rose petals, anise, cedar, and leather. On the palate it shows good concentration of fruit, which at the moment is crisply framed by tannin and acid. It’s a heady, powerful glass of wine—decant it at least an hour before service if you’re drinking one now, and serve it around 60-65 in your largest Burgundy bowls—but I want to leave it be for now and start re-visiting some bottles in 2020. This should enter its peak drinking window around its 10th birthday and continue to age gracefully for another decade-plus beyond that. Few wines in the world are surer bets for the cellar, but whenever the time comes for you, pair this with something braise-y and rich to tame it. Attached is the go-to recipe in Piedmont for a wine of this magnitude. It, like the wine, is a can’t-miss.
