Piemonte

The wine brings with it a precious baggage of qualitative features, which derive from the grape variety and the terroir of provenance: we are fully committed to ensuring that all said characteristics remain integral and do not diminish or undergo modifications, thus we limit our actions to those strictly necessary, using delicate procedures, aware that every clarification, filtration or other intervention subtracts a part of the wine's qualitative characteristics. Pressing is carried out by means of soft presses so as not to tear the skins; fermentation comes about exclusively at controlled temperatures programmed for each wine, so as to preserve the precious perfumes and original flavours; the extraction of the anthocyans and polyphenols from black grapes is done by means of a very delicate system involving automatic rotary sprinklers that shower must onto the skins.

As for our white wines, among the most innovative actions, we would mention the one adopted for Gavi: cold maceratyion of a part of the cortese grapes before pressing, so as to favour a more marked and delicate extraction of their perfumes. As regards red wines, of great importance for us is the choice of wood, capacity and age of the barrels used, all of which in French oak. We use oak tuns for the fermentation of our highly prized reds and barrels of different sizes for their refinement.

For instance: 225-litre barrels for Montemareto and in part for La Court Barbera d'Asti (of which 50% is instead refined in fermentation tuns); 700-litre barrels for the Barolo and Barbaresco crus; 5000-litre barrels for Barbera d'Asti Cipressi della Court, Le Orme, classic Barolo and Barbaresco. All our top-rank reds (Barolo, Barbaresco and relative crus, Barbera d'Asti La Court , Montemareto) are bottled without having previously undergone filtration, so as to maintain integral both their original wealth of bouquet and taste. The “long-life” reds undergo lengthy and adequate refinement in the bottle, away from the light, at a constant temperature of 14- 16°C so as to enable them slowly to develop heady fragrances and to deliciously harmonise their flavours. It is precisely in this stage that the greatness of a wine comes to the fore: thus we delay putting our crus of red wines on sale until after the deadline foreseen by the individual Production Regulations, so that they may arrive on the wine-lover's table ready to be appreciated to the utmost.