The three Barbera wines, one principle: intervene as little as possible and let the fruit speak. But the journey from grape to bottle is not the same for all three.
I. Hand harvest — September, before dawn
It starts here, in the early hours of the morning when temperatures are still cool and the grapes have not yet shed their overnight freshness. We pick every bunch by hand, into perforated crates of no more than twenty kilograms — small enough that the weight at the bottom does not crush the fruit. No harvesting machine.
Anyone who wants to ferment with the indigenous yeasts living on their own grapes must bring intact fruit into the cellar — not crushed, not oxidised. A broken berry has already started working in an uncontrolled way. We select in the vineyard: damaged, unripe or mould-affected clusters do not go into the crates.
We decide when to pick by tasting, not by looking at the calendar. Every year is different: a hot vintage might push harvest forward by a week; a cool one asks us to wait until the acidity softens just enough.
II. Destemming and sorting
The clusters arrive at the cellar whole and are destemmed immediately. The stem — the woody skeleton of the bunch — can contribute harsh, green tannins to the must if left to macerate. We separate it from the berries using a gentle roller destemmer: the goal is to remove the stem without bursting the fruit. A second manual sorting pass removes any remaining substandard berries.
Only then does the must enter the tank. Nothing is added: no sulphur dioxide, no pectolytic enzymes, no selected yeasts.
III. Spontaneous fermentation — the part where we step back
Fermentation begins when the indigenous yeasts — living on the grape skins and on the cellar walls — decide the moment is right. Usually within a few days. We monitor temperatures and perform pump-overs to keep the skins in suspension, but we do not push the timeline.
For Giglio Rosa we work in rosé style: the skins stay in contact with the must for just a few hours, long enough to release colour and a part of the varietal aromatics. Then they are separated and fermentation continues without skins, in stainless steel.
For Millecolli maceration lasts longer — several days — to draw out colour, structure and the light tannic signature that Barbera can give when treated with patience. Then pressing, separation from the skins, and fermentation continues in steel.
For Madonna dei Monti the initial process mirrors the Millecolli, but the grapes come from our oldest vines and the parcel with the best aspect. That origin is where the difference begins.
IV. Ageing — each wine takes its own time
After fermentation, the three wines take separate paths.
Giglio Rosa rests in stainless steel for several months. Steel gives nothing to the wine: it preserves freshness, fruit and that petal-pink colour. This is a wine meant to be drunk young, and the steel ageing protects it in that direction.
Millecolli also stays in steel, for a longer stretch. The aim is the same purity as the Giglio Rosa, but with more depth: Barbera d'Asti needs a few months to integrate its components and find balance. It ages, then is bottled without heavy filtration.
Madonna dei Monti takes a different route: eighteen months in 225-litre second- and third-fill barriques. Used barrels do not contribute aggressive tannins — they have already given that part of themselves to previous vintages. What they provide is oxygen: slowly, through the pores of the wood, they oxygenate the wine and allow it to build a complexity that steel cannot offer. A period of bottle ageing follows before release.
V. Bottling — when the wine is ready
Bottling takes place without sterile filtration. A light filtration is enough to stabilise the wine without stripping the compounds that give it character. We use lightweight bottles to reduce our environmental footprint and Nomacorc Green closures — synthetic, recyclable, consistent in their oxygen permeability.
The wine goes out when it is ready. Not when the calendar says so, not when cashflow demands it. Madonna dei Monti, in particular, waits for its own time: bottle ageing is not a formality, it is part of the process.
Three different paths. The one thing they share — beyond the grape, the vineyard, the territory — is the decision not to add what is not needed. In the cellar, as in the vineyard: do less, listen more.