Cascine Gasparda
Piemonte, Monferrato, Italy
 

Cascina Gasparda started, in its current form, in 2010, when brothers Roberto and Mauro Salvaneschi began bottling wine under the family name, ending years of making it purely for their own table.
 

Three years later their parents, Patrizia and Pietro, bought the Cascina Gasparda farmhouse itself, tucked in the Genza Valley between Olivola and Frassinello Monferrato, right in the heart of the UNESCO-listed Monferrato countryside. The estate covers around 12 hectares in total, half planted to vines and half left as woods and meadow, on soils that shift from red to grey to white limestone, all left to grow over with grass and wildflowers.
 

The vineyard is worked with minimal tillage to protect the soil structure, and the family has moved steadily toward biodynamic practice, becoming members of VinNatur along the way. Grignolino is the estate's signature grape, alongside Barbera, Freisa, Cortese and Nebbiolo, all farmed organically and picked by hand.
 

In the cellar the Salvaneschis are in no hurry: wines are often left to settle quietly for a winter or two before bottling, a patience that shows in the vibrant, layered character of what eventually ends up in the glass.