Elio Grasso

Although the Grasso estate itself dates back to 1928, Elio Grasso hadn’t actually made wine before leaving a Turin banking career in the late 1970s. Until then, the family sold their grapes to be blended into a third party’s wine. But Grasso realised the potential of some of their sites in top crus around Monforte d’Alba, in the south of the Barolo zone. So in the early 1980s, he made the decision to vinify Barbera, Dolcetto and, above all, Nebbiolo – and crucially, he vinified the different sites separately. Since then, making meticulous single-vineyard Barolos, expressing the extraordinary subtlety of this terroir, has been his passion – and it shows. A self-confessed disciple of the great Piedmont winemaker, the late Aldo Conterno, Grasso has followed Conterno’s modern-traditionalist style, blending technical precision with classic Barolo structure. Now managed by his son Gianluca, the wines have won highly praise from critics over the past two decades.