In 1921, after the death of my great grandfather Luigi Ferraris, my great grandmother Bruno Teresa bought the house in Via Al Castello , where now there is the wine vault of the Farm.
After two years, my grandfather Martino bought (with many efforts) the "Casot" that was nothing but a rustic farmhouse in a piece of ground of about 40.000 square metres where now, after two years of hard work, there are three of the most representative vineyards of the Farm: "the Casot Vineyard" where we cultivate "Grignolino" with an extent of about 20.000 metres that allows us to get an excellent and matchless product, thanks to its sandy soil and to the total exposure to the sunlight during the summer afternoons.
On the right of the "Casot" there is "the Cavallina vineyard" that I have dedicated to my grandfather Martino and I renamed it "the Martin's vineyard" , because, according to what my father tells, it has been his warhorse for the production of the "still barbera" (like people used to name in those years); in this vineyard I reimplanted the barbera vines from which today I produce the Barbera of Asti "Martin's vineyard".
In the neighbourhood, with the same exposure, there is San Marcellino , a vineyard of about 5.000 metres from which we produce the light and delicate Barbera of Monferrato, that has on the label the very name of the vineyard.
I have really bought the other piece of ground of our property, choosing carefully among the landowners of other grounds, giving life to the "Bric d'Bianc", the whole hill between Castagnole Monferrato and Scurzolengo, not far from Gioia hamlet. In 2000, I changed this wooded hill to vineyard and I fell in love with the stories of the oldest people of Castagnole who told: "you cannot find hills as good and rich as the Bric d'Bianc from Casale to the south of Asti"; determined and, above all, curious, I bought this hill and I divided it into four parts: three of them of Ruché and the other one of Syrah with different exposure of rows in order to get the major sunlight. Here we have one of the greatest Ruché vineyard of the area, 40.000 square metres, plus 10.000 squared metres of Syrah : I must admit that the old people of Castagnole were sincere about that hill!!.....
Finally, I would like to tell you something about the wine vault, where all the efforts of a long year of work in the vineyards, become poetry that every producer, in his way, transmits inside the bottle.
The wine vault, bought by my great grandfather Luigi thanks to the work in mine, is located in the historic centre of Castagnole Monferrato among the walls of the old castle, and it's here that wine is made with modern machines and high technologies together with oak tuns and buttes that keep what Piemonte's vine tradition imposes.
On the basement, under the house of people who work for the Farm, there is the historic wine vault where we do part of the fermentation and the sharpening of all the wines that we produced. This corner of history is really interesting not only for passionate people of wine's world; it is divided into three rooms: in the first one, built in 1430, there are all the steel inox tanks that allow the check of the temperature for an optimal alcoholic fermentation; through a narrow tuff passage with an extraordinary ceiling of bricks, that nobody could make today, we arrive to the central room of the wine vault where walls are made of tuff and bricks; here there are the oak tuns and buttes realised directly in the room because of the important sizes; in front of these imposing wood masterpieces, where wine finds the maximum wellbeing and satisfaction, here is the famous "CRUTIN" that I have renamed "Il Salotto del Ruché".
It extends for some metres in a narrow and imperfect way with, on the sides, some small niches where I lay my most esteemed bottles that, thanks to this particular place, reach a perfect sharpening. I like to remember that this "historical find" has been dug my grandfather, with his hands, in winter: this is the reason why I left some of his bottles of Barbera of 1964 (the very year he lived). Through a tuff arch we reach the third and last room of the wine vault where you can find barrique and tonneau that are the quiet places of "THE KING" and "THE QUEEN".
Now, after having told you about all the vine-growing history of my family, of the vineyards and the wine vault, let's go to visit a small but beautiful world that I use to call "Il Salotto del Ruché", and so to taste what I consider a choice of life and not a job: the Ruché of Castagnole Monferrato.