These Wines Are Almost Sold Out and VinItaly Is Still 3 Months Away - INSANE 2016 Vintage - I Have 60 Bottles. Some of the Most Precise Fruit in Our Book, Young Superstar

The Alto Piemonte Gold Rush
 - 2016 Is Being Heralded As an Incredible Vintage
 - The 2015 Sold Out at VinItaly in a Day 
 - VinItaly is 3 months Away and the 2016 is Almost Gone
 - I Had to Sell This Now

The Cult of Marco Bui
 - Majored in Agronomy
 - Took Over the Family Estate
 - Already Has a Cult Following in Italy

The Wines
 - I Don't Talk About Living Soil, Organic and Biodynamic 
 - But This Guy Is Making Me a Believer 
 - Some of the Cleanest Most Precise, Delicious Fruit in our Book
 - These are Must Own for Piedmont Drinkers 

2016 Tenute Guardasole Boca
 - Only 60 Bottles
 - One of the Greatest Alto Piemonte Wines I've Ever Had 
 - Nose: Incredibly Elegant Cherry Flower, A Hint of Licorice Flower
 - Almost Burgundian on the Palate
 - An Exercise in Precision and Elegance
 - Incredible Dense Cherry Fruit
 - Terrific Structure
 - Sick Internal Aromatics
 - The Stuff of Stardom

2016 in Alto Piemonte
The 2016s in Barbaresco were fantastic - I loved them and they got raves from the critics.
The 2016s in Barolo are supposedly going to be incredible (I haven't tried them yet).

I'm hearing that the 2016s in Alto Piemonte are as epic as their cousins in the South (the Langhe).  I only tried a few 2016 reds from Alto Piemonte last year and fortunately, today's offer was one of them.

Last year, Marco's wines sold out in a day at VinItaly (I fortunately reserved mine then).  Unfortunately, this year the wines will not make it to VinItaly.  There are very few bottles left of the 2016 given the star quality of the producer and the buzz about the vintage.  The wine is sick good as well, especially for the price.

The Winery
This is the kind of producer I love selling even though there's hardly any wine.  Marco Bui took over

his family's estate a few years ago and replanted everything other than some 80 year old Dolcetto.  He hardly makes and wine and you can taste the amount of effort he puts into his vines with every sip. This guy will be a star once he has enough wine to sell.  Until then, he's just going to be a cult favorite. When I say he has some of the best fruit In my book, I mean it. This is a passion project for the foreseeable future for me as I won't have enough wine for it to be anything else.  These will likely be allocated.

The wine is the 2016 Tenute Guardasole Boca for $37.99 net for a 4-pack.  This wine brings it. Remember this is a $60 bottle of wine (through 3 tier) I am selling for $38 a bottle.

The nose on this wine is transporting.  It carries all of the aromatics and complexities of the forest floor with hints (and eventually more than hints with a bit of air) of forest fruits.  The nose on this is so stunning. Incredibly elegant cherry flower with a hint of licorice flower and that inimitable Boca forest floor.  So gorgeous you can smell it for 15 minutes before even tasting it. On the palate, I'd almost call this Burgundian even though that word is so overused. 

The palate has greater density than the 2015 but is still subtle, haunting, elegant, cerebral and just flat out gorgeous. Super precise, deep cherry fruit with really, really beautiful internal aromatics of cherries and flowers. I cannot believe how precise this wine is yet also structured and powerful. I know many of these wines have a reputation as poor man's Barolo, but this drinks like a rich man's Barolo with just a different profile. It's really poetry on the palate.  Terrific acid balance and the traditional Fass juiciness. Super juicy.  The added 2016 density gives you a different kind of Boca - you can taste the concentration and structure in the wine in addition to the trademark Boca elegance.  Terrific texture. Just enough to coat the palate but not at all rustic. Gorgeous cherry fruit with a hint of spice and licorice. Really well integrated.  Cherry flower internal aromatics haunt the palate. Really sick aromatics. Incredibly elegant and such great mouthfeel. The first wine shows what the winemaker can do with a more simple wine.  This one really allows him to strut his stuff with better terroir.


This is drinking now with a decant but will improve over 3-5 years and drink for 10-15. One point that needs to be made. There is $40 Barolo out there via the 3-Tier system and one may be thinking, "Why buy $38 Boca vs $37 Barolo," but you should not think like that. A $37 flagship wine from a to region no one knows about is always better than a $37 wine from a popular region that everyone knows about. In this case this beats even $50-$60 Barolo, the wine is that good. I've had $22 Barolo I would not serve my cats.

2016 Tenute Guardasole Boca - $39.99 ($151.96 4-pack)