Maria Antonietta

Maria Antonietta is a small, family-run estate in Villa del Bosco, at the northern edge of Piedmont, in the province of Biella. Cristiano Garella, the de-facto ambassador of Alto Piemonte (and one of the region’s biggest champions), consults on the winemaking side with Maria Antonietta.

The winery consists of five hectares of vineyards situated at the foot of the Alps, where the snow-capped Monte Rosa Mountain juts up behind the vines. This is Alto Piemonte —cool, high elevation, and shaped by dramatic day-to-night (diurnal) temperature swings that give the wines here their signature lift, freshness, and energy.

The estate's philosophy is quite simple: the land makes the wine, and the family's job is to farm it with respect and stay out of its way.

Villa del Bosco is one of just seven communes permitted to produce Bramaterra DOC — placing Maria Antonietta at the source of one of Italy's rarest reds, an appellation with barely 35 hectares in total production. The soil in Bramaterra is a distinctive mix of ancient volcanic porphyry and glacial moraine (deposits of rock, gravel, sand, and clay left behind by a glacier) left by retreating Monte Rosa glaciers. This mixed soil type is what gives the wines of Bramaterra their characteristic balance of aromatic lift and structural depth. The wines are Nebbiolo-predominant (known locally as Spanna), traditionally blended with Croatina, Vespolina and Uva Rara — giving the perfume and racy acidity of Alto Piemonte Nebbiolo over a darker-fruited, firmly structured, age-worthy core. The winery also makes a Coste della Sesia DOC Rosso.

Everything here is done by hand, and work in both the vineyards and the cellar is conducted in a minimal invention way. No herbicides or pesticides are used. In the cellar the fruit is gently destemmed and pressed, then moved by soft pump to fermentation: a low-intervention approach that lets site and vintage speak for themselves.