Vietti Barolo Brunate 2020
£185.25
The wine
Brunate sits on the La Morra flank of Barolo, on marl that gives perfume before power. Supple and elegant, with expressive fruit aromas, spicy overtones and the distinctive violet note the vineyard is known for. A liquorice sensation lingers on the long finish.
Brunate is among the most historically celebrated vineyards in the whole appellation, named in print as a superior site as early as the eighteenth century. It straddles the boundary between La Morra and Barolo village, on the Tortonian marls that dominate the western half of the zone: paler, more calcareous soils that tend to give aromatic lift and a rounder tannin than the harder eastern slopes. Long-lived, but approachable earlier than Serralunga fruit.
The producer
Vietti
View all Vietti winesVietti is one of the defining names of Piedmont, based in the village of Castiglione Falletto at the heart of Barolo. The family have grown grapes here since the nineteenth century, but the estate as we know it was shaped by Alfredo Currado, who married Luciana Vietti in 1957 and spent the next four decades changing what Piedmont thought possible.
Two things made his name. In 1961 he bottled Barolo from the Rocche di Castiglione vineyard on its own, one of the first single-cru Barolos ever released, at a time when almost everything was blended across the commune. The idea that individual sites deserved their own bottling is now orthodoxy; then it was heresy. He also rescued Arneis, the white grape of the Roero, which had fallen to a handful of rows and was days from disappearing altogether.
The range here runs from Roero Arneis and Timorasso through Barbera and Langhe Nebbiolo to seven Barolo crus and a Barbaresco, each farmed and vinified separately. Vietti labels have carried commissioned artwork since 1974, which is why no two look quite alike.
