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ELIO ALTARE is a man wth serious winemaking bona fides.

AndywithAltareFamily.jpg Andy Pates with the Altare Family in Barolo, Spring 2014

Often garnished with accolades by food and wine magazine Gambero Rosso for making some of the best wines in Italy, and generally considered one of the great winemakers in the world, this is a man who revolutionized the way we think of Piedmont wines.

Below the hilltop town of La Morra and above Annunziata, lay the 5 hectares that make up Altare, which has been planted and maintained by the family since 1948. But the story is not all bucolic: now renowned for being a major innovator in the region, Elio Altare almost lost all claim to the winery for his rebellious winemaking views.

Elio was at the forefront of the period in Barolo when traditional, regional winemaking collided head-first with a new generation’s desire for modernity. After a trip to Burgundy in the 1970s, Elio returned with new visions of modernizing the family winery—which meant replacing the large aging barrels with smaller French barriques. His father did not share his vision, and the tension culminated when Elio took a chainsaw to his father’s old barrels. He was banned from the winery until his father’s death in 1985. Since he’s regained control, he implemented rigorous organic agriculture, was one of the first to use rotary fermenters and short macerations, and he did indeed employ small barriques for aging.

Elio’s focus is on simple and natural wines without chemicals, fertilizers, or pesticides (and has been for 30 years). Two cows is all he uses to create manure for fertilization. Sulfur use is low. Wine ferments with indigenous yeast and undergoes spontaneous malolactic fermentation. The wines are not filtered or fined. He adds nothing that might change the color or texture, and he uses stainless steel tanks and clean barriques. Basically, these are unmitigated wines that express the nature of the grapes and place they came from.

Today he is mentor to many of the younger generation of winemakers in the commune of La Morra. His daughters, Silvia and Elena, are poised to carry on his legacy as the next generation of exceptional Barolisti.

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