2006 Barolo Gran Bussia

According to Giacomo Conterno, 2009 was a winemaker's vintage in Barolo. "At the end of August we had huge differences in maturity within the same rows, worse than ever before," he told me. "Our strategy was to focus on the winners: we cut off all of the less advanced grapes. That enabled us to the pick the rest of our fruit ripe, and not too late." He went on: "Another choice was to pick in two passes. Some people bet on their green grapes and let them hang, but they never got ripe. So they ended up picking a combination of very ripe, high-alcohol, high-tannin grapes and underripe grapes. There are many unbalanced 2009s with high alcohol and green tannins." That last pass through the vines, which Conterno referred to as "Darwinian selection," resulted in yields well below 30 hectoliters per hectare. But Conterno noted that overall production here in general has been drastically reduced over the last decade, from 200,000 bottles prior to 2001 to about 80,000 today. Incidentally, the Conternos pulled up their old dolcetto vines in 2012 and may plant freisa in their place.