Bricco San Pietro cru
It’s our cru, and the farmhouse sits inside it. The Bricco San Pietro is the largest official cru in all of Barolo, and over the last decade it’s also the Monforte cru that has grown the most: in number of wines produced, in wineries involved and, to a good extent, in quality.
- Area
- 380.09 hectares, 48% of it vineyard — the largest cru in Barolo
- Altitude
- 255–521 metres. The hill that gives the cru its name reaches 535 metres: the third-highest point in the whole Barolo area
- Grapes
- Just over three quarters Nebbiolo, the rest mostly Barbera and Dolcetto
- Exposure
- Given its size, no single one prevails
- First vintage
- 1978
The figures above refer to the whole cru, not just our vineyards: they’re there to give a sense of the place where we work.
The soil is sandy Sant’Agata Fossili marl, Tortonian, about ten million years old: that pale grey you recognise as you walk on it. It’s the sandy component that shows in the glass: it drains well, pushes the roots deep and gives a fine-grained tannin.
But a cru this big is not one single thing. Inside it are areas that differ greatly in tradition, geology and exposure, each with its old name: Bettola, Corsini, Cucchi, Goretta, Manzoni, Settevie, Tantesi, Viglioni.
Our vineyards lie on two different slopes of the cru, and it’s no small detail: the wines that come out of them change.
The western slope, the one facing Novello: it’s the other face of the hill from Corsini. Here water is never lacking and the soils change constantly — from young to evolved within a few metres, with the marl layers sometimes surfacing and sometimes lying much deeper. This slope gives our three Barolo — Barolo del Comune di Monforte, Barolo Bricco San Pietro and the Riserva — together with the Barbera d’Alba Superiore and part of the Langhe Nebbiolo.
It faces east, and it’s the most uniform and coolest area of the whole cru. The soils are shallower than on the other slope and hold less water: two conditions that give wines with more structure and less fruit than you’d expect. Here the exposure preserves acidity, which is why on this side we keep the grapes that need freshness most: this is where the Dolcetto d’Alba and the Barbera d’Alba.
San Giovanni
The second cru where we have vines: just sixty-eight hectares, against the three hundred and eighty of the Bricco San Pietro. It lies in the valley of the Bussia stream, on the west-facing slope. We make no Barolo here: San Giovanni gives us the Langhe Nascetta, part of the Barbera d’Alba and the Langhe Nebbiolo and the grapes for the Metodo Classico.
They’re also the youngest vines on the estate. You can tell in the glass: more direct, fruit-driven wines that open up sooner and don’t ask you to wait.
- Area
- 68.48 hectares, 62% of it vineyard
- Altitude
- 260–400 metres
- Grapes
- About seven tenths Nebbiolo, with more Barbera than in the Bricco San Pietro
- Exposure
- East on one slope, west on the opposite one
- First vintage
- 1995
The figures above refer to the whole cru, not just our vineyards: they’re there to give a sense of the place where we work.
The other grapes
Nebbiolo is eighty percent. The rest of the hill is Barbera, Dolcetto, Chardonnay and Nascetta: not fillers, but the wines people in the Langhe really drink at the table every day, and which tell the story of the same land in another key.
All the vineyards are worked the same way, with no distinction between Barolo and the rest: grass between the rows, no herbicides, protection based mainly on copper and sulphur. The whole estate is certified for integrated production, audited every year by an independent body.