Elio Altare

The Elio Altare winery has such an important and significant history that it is included, without a shadow of a doubt, in the wine history of Piedmont. It all begins with Giuseppe Altare, Elio's father, who in 1948, with foresight, purchased a cellar in La Morra, planting native vines such as Nebbiolo, Dolcetto and Barbera. His son Elio immediately showed great interest in the business, but also understood that if it was not developed and modernized properly, it risked remaining a family-style and almost amateur business. After a trip to France, to understand the secrets of the success of the great French wines, Elio, remaining completely fascinated by the transalpine winemaking techniques and returns with the desire to make great changes in his father's cellar, first of all the abandonment of the great and old oak barrels for the refinement of Barolo, wanting to replace them with the more modern French barriques, small 225 liter barrels, widely used beyond the Alps and around the world. Naturally, he finds strong resistance from his father and, for this reason, he carries out a sensational and, for the time, "blasphemous" gesture: with a chainsaw he tears the old barrels of his father's cellar into pieces; the reaction is immediate: he is disinherited! This is the first seed for the creation of that handful of young winemakers who, following Elio, break the ancient rules of the traditional cultivation and winemaking of the time and change the way of making Barolo: they will be called the Barolo Boys. After his father's death, Elio manages to buy back the cellar from his brothers and, animated by the same dreams as before, continues the great experimental work that will lead him to have, together with the other winemakers who followed him, great success, especially in United States, in the 90s with the "new Barolo" in a "rejuvenated" version. These very clear positions also lead to large "ideological" divisions within the productive world of the Langhe: the two factions of the "modernists" and the "traditionalists" are created, but Elio, unlike other adventure companions, does not retreat, remains true to its position, faithful over the years to its production philosophy, extending it to the principles of organic farming. Today he dedicates himself, together with the whole family, to new projects, in addition to following the winery: among others, the production of white wine in the Cinqueterre, a land of extreme viticulture and the restoration of a village in Castelmagno (in the valleys between Piedmont and France) where he is responsible for the production of the famous cheese of the same name.