Ceretto Aziende Vitivinicole (2024)

Wine, good food, history, tradition and culture are the cornerstones of our land. Our family has wanted to give a voice to all these aspects, starting with wine and then building, over the years, with various cultural and innovative gastronomic initiatives of success. Discover all of our projects and come and visit us! Experience the Langhe with the Cerettos.

When, in the early 2000s, Alessandro Ceretto, part of the third generation of our family, joined the company fresh from the school of oenology and after gaining years of experience in wineries around the world, from Australia to *, he noticed how difficult it was to bring the terroir of his Langhe into focus, to see it emerge in the wine. Over time - and following the path opened up mainly by the most forward-thinking French producers like Pierre Overnoy in the Jura region and Nicolas Joly in the Loire region - he realised that to understand the characteristics of the terroir you must limit human impact. In short, this meant setting aside much of what he had previously been taught about oenology: school provided recipes, but these are, by definition, the very antithesis of the terroir, which is always unique.
Following the recipes of oenology guarantees the production of correct, standardised wines, but Alessandro was convinced this was not the way to go. He started to work by subtraction: in 2008 he began to ferment the crus (we prefer to use the local name: ‘bricchi’, our hilltop vineyards) with no selected yeasts, gradually developing a method in which a pied de cuve is used to start fermentation. This method also has another advantage: the fermentation time and period of maceration on the skins are exactly the same - about 20 days - and the must is naturally protected from the carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process.
Moreover, in the last twenty years we have made less and less use of new wood - i.e., barrels that have never held wine - in our cellars. The rationale is the same as that behind our other choices, namely to intervene as little as possible: the characteristic of each wine is its scent, which the aromas and tannin of new wood cover.