Cascina Gramolere di Pressenda Claudio

Located at the end of a long windy track in the comune of Monforte d’Alba, perched high above the countryside, vigneti & boschi at 400m asl, in the epicentre of the Gramolere cru on fine friable grey marne & tortoniono arenaria di diano soils, west facing, is found the casa & cantina of Claudio Pressenda. He was born there in 1972, but the Pressenda family actually originate from across the bricco in the zone of Castelletto, dating back to 1887. Claudio’s great grand-parents bought Cascina Gramolere in 1908. His uncle Natale (Seghesio), a poet contadino, also farms the Gramolere hill alongside his nephew. Claudio’s wife Carla is from Mondovi, near Cuneo.

Claudio graduated from agraria college in Grinzane Cavour, now part of the Alba wine school, Umberto 1. They started bottling a few hundred bottles in the 1980s, releasing their first label. Claudio initiated the first commercial bottlings in 1993 when he joined his father Oreste. They have a single plot of 4.5ha of Gramolere cru vines surrounding the casa/cantina, half of which is planted to Nebbiolo da Barolo. The oldest vines are Dolcetto & Barbera, & date back to 1979. Claudio has replanted the Nebbiolo da Barolo vines on three occasions: 2000, 2007, & 2016; they lie below the casa/cantina, facing due west. He stopped using herbicides in 2016.

In their old, 19th century cantina, vinification is classical: fermentation in stainless steel/fibre glass, using rimontaggio for no more than 20 days, before affinanmento for two years in twenty year-old 15HL botti Garbellotto & Pauscha. Bottling is by hand at circa 70mg/L sulphur; DIAM10 is used for the corks. They make a single Barolo from their Gramolere vines.