OSCARWINE — Parusso, innovazione e modernità nel Barolo

Marco describes a poor mixed-farming background in which his father raised animals and his grandfather’s grapes went to the cooperative. After encouragement from Alfredo Roagna and Domenico Clerico, and travel that included Burgundy, he entered the family business immediately after graduating from oenological school in 1986. Tiziana joined soon afterward. Their first quantities were below 10,000 bottles, and the vineyard areas were vinified separately.

The 1986 methanol crisis and the late-1980s emergence of Langa In are presented as turning points for growers willing to guarantee their own production chain and develop direct markets. Slow Food, Marco De Grazia and exchanges among small producers helped move Barolo away from a trade dominated by large bottlers.

In the vineyard, Parusso replaced uniform treatment with localized “diets.” Rich and lean bands receive different nutrition and pruning; herbicides are excluded, diverse plants are sown between rows and chemistry is reserved for situations such as serious fungal pressure. The purpose is to build deeper roots and plants better able to adapt to climatic change.

In the cellar, the rotary fermenter and controlled low-temperature extraction are central. Marco argues for active, informed management rather than an ideology of non-intervention: technology is welcomed when it can produce a wine that is simultaneously richer, finer and more elegant.