Wines written
slowly,
by one family.
Seven cuvées. Thirty-eight hectares. Four generations of stubborn patience. Taste what the hills of Barolo give when nothing is rushed.
“The vineyard writes the wine — we are only the scribes who happen to live here.”
Seven wines, written over three years.
Each release spends longer in our cellar than most wines spend in a glass. Here are the three we’re pouring this season.
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A farm first. A winery second. A family, always.
Maison Cortese occupies the same stone farmhouse that Elena and Paolo Cortese bought with a dowry in 1887. Today, their great-granddaughter Sofia works the same east-facing slopes — picking at dawn, pressing before sundown, ageing in the vaulted cellar her grandfather carved by hand.
We farm 38 hectares of Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto, and Moscato using organic practices certified since 2004. What comes out of this cellar is never the fastest wine — only the most honest one we knew how to make that year.
Taste where the wine is made.
Walk the rows at Bricco delle Viole, descend into the 1920s stone cellar, and sit with Sofia for a guided flight of five wines and a hand-cut salumi board.
Vineyard walk at sunrise
Meet Sofia at the top of the Bricco delle Viole parcel as the fog lifts. A slow walk through our oldest Nebbiolo vines, with coffee and a morning biscotti.
Cellar descent & barrel tasting
Into the vaulted cellar our great-grandfather dug by hand. Taste two wines direct from the barrel and two recent releases alongside them.
Seated flight with salumi board
Five wines — from the Moscato d’Asti to the Barolo Riserva — paired with hand-cut prosciutto, aged Toma, and local honey.
Private harvest weekend
September & October only. Pick Nebbiolo grapes by hand, eat harvest lunch at the long farmhouse table, and take home a case of the vintage you helped pick.
Praised in quiet corners.
“A Barolo of remarkable poise. Rose, cherry, and that strange cellar-darkness only time can give a wine. Cortese keeps getting quieter — and better.”
“If you want Barbaresco that feels written with a fountain pen rather than stamped out, Luna Alta is it. Fine, floral, unrepeatable.”
“One of the most quietly revelatory cellars in Piedmont. The Moscato tastes like an afternoon you did not know you missed.”
The long slow year, told in four chapters.
Canopy by hand
Each vine pruned, tied, and green-harvested one by one. No mechanisation. No shortcuts.
Harvest at first light
Picking starts before the fog lifts. Fruit in the press by noon. Nothing sits in the sun.
Slow fermentation
Ambient yeast, temperature-controlled but never rushed. We wait until the juice is finished speaking.
Cellar patience
Botti grande for the Nebbiolo. Stainless for the Barbera. The Barolo will not see a shelf for five years.
Four letters a year. No algorithms. No sale emails.
Harvest notes in October. A new release each spring. Two dispatches from the cellar when the wine asks us to write. Unsubscribe in one click.