Antoniolo
Appellations
History
Antoniolo was founded in 1948 in Gattinara by Mario Antoniolo. In the 1950s and 1960s, a period when many local families were leaving the countryside for factory work elsewhere in Piedmont, Antoniolo instead acquired vineyard land in the appellation's best sites, building up a holding of Gattinara's top crus by the 1970s, including what became a monopole on the Osso San Grato vineyard. Along with a small number of other historic houses, the estate is credited with keeping Gattinara DOCG in commercial production through the decades when the appellation's vineyard area shrank sharply.
Mario's daughter Rosanna Antoniolo took over the estate and, in 1974, on the advice of the Italian wine journalist Luigi Veronelli, began bottling the Osso San Grato and San Francesco vineyards separately as single-vineyard Gattinaras, a move sources describe as revolutionary for the appellation. Antoniolo is regarded as the first Gattinara DOCG producer to bottle cru-designated wines, and it remains one of the few local estates whose wines are 100% Nebbiolo with no other varieties blended in.
Rosanna's children, Alberto and Lorella Antoniolo, now run the winery day to day: Alberto oversees winemaking and Lorella has also served for a decade as chair of the Gattinara producers' consortium. The estate continues to ferment spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in concrete vats and age its wines in large botti, and farms with integrated pest management, avoiding systemic products and chemical fertilizers.