Giacomo Conterno
Appellations
History
The exact founding date of the estate is disputed even among close sources. Wikipedia traces its roots to a family tavern that Giovanni Conterno opened in San Giuseppe, near Monforte d'Alba, possibly as early as 1908, with Giovanni's son Giacomo Conterno beginning to bottle Barolo under the family name after returning from World War I, in either 1912 or 1920. The US importer Polaner Selections instead dates the estate's founding to "the 1920s," crediting Giacomo Conterno as founder and noting that the first confirmed vintage of the family's flagship wine was 1924, while acknowledging family reports of a possible 1912 bottling that could not be verified. After Giovanni's death in the 1930s, Giacomo named his ambitious, long-aging Barolo riserva Monfortino, for the home village of Monforte d'Alba; for decades the estate made only a normale and a riserva Barolo from grapes purchased from local growers, following the philosophy that a young Monfortino should taste "undrinkable" but reward decades of cellaring.
Giacomo's sons, Giovanni and Aldo Conterno, formally took over in 1961, with Giovanni already responsible for winemaking since the 1959 vintage. The brothers split in 1969 over differing views on style: Aldo wanted to explore more modern techniques and left to found his own estate, Poderi Aldo Conterno, while Giovanni continued the strictly traditional approach, long macerations and long aging in large Slavonian oak botti with no barriques. In 1974 Giovanni purchased the Cascina Francia vineyard in Serralunga d'Alba, ending the era of buying grapes from other growers; the first estate-grown vintage was 1978, though the Cascina Francia vineyard name did not appear on the normale label until 1979 or 1980. Giovanni's youngest son, Roberto Conterno, began working alongside his father in 1988 and took over the estate after Giovanni's death in February 2004, becoming the third generation to run it.
Under Roberto Conterno the estate has expanded its Serralunga d'Alba holdings while keeping the traditional winemaking style intact: he added the Cerretta vineyard in 2008 and, in 2015, the Arione vineyard bought from Cantina Gigi Rosso, adjoining Cascina Francia. Since the 2015 vintage, Monfortino has drawn on grapes from both Cascina Francia and Arione. In 2018 Roberto Conterno separately acquired a majority stake in Nervi, a historic Gattinara producer in Alto Piemonte, from a group of Norwegian investors; that estate operates under the distinct Nervi-Conterno label and is not part of the Giacomo Conterno Barolo property described here.