2020 Musso Dolcetto d'Alba Piedmont 750 ml

Share a day’s-end glass with a local winemaker at a Piemontese trattoria, and chances are you wouldn’t unwind with one of the collectible bottles that often require decades of age—you’d slake your thirst with a deep, ruby-red Dolcetto. 

It’s the kind of wine that locals consume by the cask while their slow-evolving Nebbiolos bide their time in the cellar—and there’s no better bottle for a red-wine lover to have on hand than a bright, lip-smacking Dolcetto like the 2020 Musso Dolcetto d'Alba.

It comes from the Rio Sordo cru—a vineyard so coveted that it’s one of the riserva bottlings released by the prestigious Produttori del Barbaresco—and it’s got a depth and complexity that’s rarely found in a grape often relegated to second-tier sites.

We sipped this bottle with winemaker Emanuele Musso on a recent trip to Italy and we were floored, not only because it’s a delectable expression of Dolcetto’s mouthwatering juiciness, but also by how it was balanced an intriguing rusticity that provided the perfect counterpart to its natural fruit-forwardness.    

Founded in 1929 by Sebastiano Musso, the winery started as only tre giornata piemontese (a little more than one hectare) in Barbaresco and still sits in its original location along Via Domitius Cavazza 5. They hand-harvest their grapes and ferment the Dolcetto in stainless-steel tanks, where it spends its first few months. It’s then transferred to huge 4000-liter barrels, where it stays for two months before aging an additional two months in bottle.

Even if your cellar’s deep on Barolo and Barbaresco, you don’t truly know Piedmont until you’ve paired an excellent Dolcetto with a stew, steak, or pizza, or simply delighted in a glass on its own.