Another one on Prunotto

Apart from the Barolo Bussia, that we talked about here, there are a couple of other wines available from this producer. We decided to check them out, because it's always good to have a variety of wines at hand from a quality producer like Prunotto.

When we were scanning the wine list of Shannon Bennet's Vue Restaurant (more on that later) for wines that we could actually afford, we stumbled across the Prunotto Barolo 2000. This wine is a blend of grapes from different vineyards in the Barolo region in northern Italy. You could say it's the smaller, more approachable and more affordable brother of the Bussia (which is one of the best vineyards in the region). Indeed a very fine wine. Quite soft, but plenty of fruit still and lovely secondary aromas. This is a nice one to check out if the price is better than the 19.500 OMR the Bussia currently goes for.

The other wine we tried was the Nebbiolo d'Alba Occhetti 2003. The Nebbiolo d'Alba designation has less strict rules than Barolo, but the wine is made from the same grape variety (nebbiolo) and comes from the same region. You could say it's an entry level wine, designed to get you acquainted with the wines of Barolo. Unfortunately it wasn't a winner. Quite lean, very acidic and showing hard tannins. It did get a bit better with some air, but still... it's a mere shadow of its bigger brothers. And with a price tag of nearly 12.000 OMR it isn't exactly cheap either. You're better off spending your money on something else. Or saving it for the better bottlings.

All these wines are available at OUA.