Aldo Conterno, Barolo “Bussia” Discount

Aldo Conterno, Barolo “Bussia”

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).