Barolo Granbussia Riserva

Granbussia is a selection rather than a single vineyard: 70% Romirasco, 15% Cicala, 15% Colonnello, three parcels inside Bussia that the estate also bottles on their own. The grapes go into the vat blended, before fermentation starts, so the three become one wine from the beginning instead of being assembled later out of finished lots. Nebbiolo of the Michet and Lampia biotypes, off the oldest vines in each parcel.

It is made only in the years the house thinks warrant it, and 2005 came after a gap. Ian D'Agata's vertical of the wine records none made in 2002, 2003 or 2004, and treats the 2005 as the first of a new course. No reason for those skipped years is on record, and the house has dropped a vintage for plain agricultural causes before - hail is the reported reason there is no 2007 Romirasco or Granbussia. What makes the gap worth noticing is that 2004 is generally ranked the better vintage in Barolo, and this wine exists in the lesser year and not in the greater one.

The Consorzio, writing at harvest, described healthy fruit with high sugar and acidity in the norm, and yields 10 to 15% below average; when the October rain arrived, more than half the Barolo crop was already in the cellar. That was a contemporaneous view, and it covered the Langhe and Roero together rather than judging Barolo alone.

Thirty days on skins in stainless steel, the fermentation finishing during the maceration, then years in large oak casks. This bottle was filled on 25 June 2008, roughly two and a half years after the harvest, and how that squares with the published accounts is unsettled: D'Agata puts the 2005 at forty-eight months in two 25-hectolitre casks, which that bottling date will not accommodate, against the thirty months he gives as the house's usual regime. Either way the balance was spent in glass, since a Barolo Riserva cannot be sold until 62 months after the first of November following the harvest. The producer now says the wine stays in the cellar at least ten years before release; older copy says eight or nine; I could not find a record of when the 2005 actually went out.

Odd for a Riserva, the front label never says so - the word sits only on the back. And the Bussia printed above the name is the old vineyard usage rather than the official sub-zone, which Barolo adopted only with the 2010 vintage.