Friends making wine in Piedmont, Italy
with precision, passion and joy
Our small winery in Rocchetta Palafea, Piedmont fuses traditional and modern techniques to make delicious artisan wines.
Our Piedmont vineyard close to Canelli is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, tended by hand. We manage our grapes without herbicides, and wildflowers grow between the rows.
Barbera, Brachetto and Moscato grapes have been cultivated in the hills of Piedmont, Italy, for more than a millennium, and our vineyard in Rocchetta Palafea was planted over sixty years ago.
The vineyard has been managed organically for the last twenty years, and when Bob and Alice bought it in 2021, they focused on growing the best possible grapes to make into the most appealing regional Piedmontese wines.
Oleksiy, our winemaker and Agricultural Director, moved into the main house with his wife Alina and their two children, and we all have been tending our vineyards near Canelli and crafting artisan wines ever since.
our Piedmont wines are made thoughtfully
We grow our Piedmont grapes using biodynamic principles, harvest them by hand, and gently press them with a pneumatic press. We have Great Tanks!
The semi-porous concrete exposes wine to low levels of oxygen, aging the wine gradually.
The shape of the concrete egg creates an internal current that moves the wine within the vessel. This natural movement matures the wine very delicately.
Egg-shaped vessels have been used to ferment wine since prehistoric times, and were supplanted by barrels around the time of Christ.
Concrete eggs have become an important part of modern artisan winemaking, combining ancient principles with contemporary winemaking techniques.
Terroir and taste
In France, they say you must bow to the vine twenty times in a year to make perfect grapes. At La Collina Degli Amici, we treat our vines like royalty.