The matriarch of Cascina delle Rose is Giovanna Rizzolio, who began making wine there in 1992 after buying the estate from her relatives. She was an outsider not just as a woman winemaker but as an emigré from the faraway reaches of Alba — three miles away from Barbaresco (apparently, yes, it was really that provincial back then). She only added to her outlaw status by farming organically and opening the first agriturismo in the region, inviting actual foreigners to stay overnight in Barbaresco.
Her sons Riccardo and Davide have been making the wines since 2017 and they have stuck firmly to Giovanna's approach. They still are an extremely small operation, only 5.5 hectares of vines plus a few more of olive trees, hazelnuts, and forest. The wines are still the opposite of the big, bombastic modern wines that began to dominate the region in the 1990s. But they are not auster. Their low-tech methods make tensile, filigreed wines that capture Nebbiolo's remarkable brooding richness without turning it into a stunt. To me, they simply turn down the volume in order to shift your attention to even more exciting details. As a result, they grab me in a way that few other Barbarescos do.
