Italy · Langhe

Azienda Agricola Marcalberto

A family sparkling wine estate in Santo Stefano Belbo making unfiltered, oak-fermented Alta Langa from Pinot Nero and Chardonnay. Founded by a sparkling wine enologist in 1993, now run by his sons Marco and Alberto. Produces Italy's first serially made zero-sulphite Traditional Method wine.

The producer

Marcalberto farms Pinot Nero and Chardonnay on medium to high elevation hillsides across three communes in the Alta Langa zone of southern Piemonte: Santo Stefano Belbo, Calosso, and Cossano Belbo. Every bottle is Metodo Classico, the Traditional Method in which secondary fermentation and lees ageing occur inside the bottle. The cellar's position is clear and unusual: first fermentation in used French oak barrels, no filtration, no clarification, and extended ageing in historic underground cellars. Nothing about the process is concession.

Piero Cane founded the estate in 1993 after spending his career as a professional sparkling wine enologist, and named it by joining the names of his two sons: Marco and Alberto became Marcalberto. When the sons took over around 2008, they kept every part of what Piero had built and went further. Alberto developed the Nature cuvée, 100% Pinot Nero fermented with native yeast and released with zero added sulphites at any stage, a wine the estate claims as the first Italian Metodo Classico produced serially on those terms. The Blanc de Blancs, the Millesimato, and the Caterina Rivella Riserva Rosé complete the range. Gambero Rosso awarded the Riserva 2018 Tre Bicchieri in 2026.

Known for

Alta Langa Metodo Classico, unfiltered and oak-fermented

Notable facts

The story

The First Bottle Without Sulphites

Alberto Cane wanted to make a Metodo Classico wine with no added sulphites, not as a single experimental release but as a permanent part of the range, the same wine, year after year, produced reliably without the sulphur dioxide that virtually every sparkling wine producer uses to guard against oxidation and microbial instability. The challenge was not making it once. It was making it consistently: native yeast fermentation, 100% Pinot Nero, used French oak, zero sulphites at every stage, and a wine that arrived in the bottle without the insurance the rest of the industry takes for granted. When Alberto completed the development and released it under the name Nature, the estate claimed it as the first Italian Metodo Classico produced serially with no added sulphites. The wine went into the range and stayed there, alongside the Blanc de Blancs and Millesimato that Piero Cane had built the estate around. Alberto's father had spent his career as a sparkling wine enologist. The son's answer was a bottle that removed every sulphite from the process his father had taught him.

From the atlas

Azienda Agricola Marcalberto

At A Glance

Location: Santo Stefano Belbo, Asti province, southern Piemonte Appellation: Alta Langa DOCG Grapes: Pinot Nero, Chardonnay Style: Metodo Classico sparkling wine, all bottles unfiltered and unclarified Production: Approximately 30,000 bottles per year Founded: 1993 Recognition: Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri 2026, Alta Langa Extra Brut Rosé Caterina Rivella Riserva 2018

The Producer

Marcalberto farms Pinot Nero and Chardonnay on medium to high elevation hillsides across three communes in the Alta Langa zone: Santo Stefano Belbo, Calosso, and Cossano Belbo. Every bottle is Metodo Classico, the Traditional Method used in Champagne, in which secondary fermentation and lees ageing occur inside the bottle itself. The estate makes four wines under the Alta Langa DOCG and releases around 30,000 bottles a year.

What sets the cellar apart is conviction about process. First fermentation happens in used French oak barrels. Extended lees ageing takes place in historic underground cellars. Nothing is filtered. Nothing is clarified. The resulting wines carry texture and autolytic depth that most Alta Langa producers do not pursue.

Piero Cane, who founded the estate in 1993, had spent his career as a sparkling wine enologist before planting his first vines. He named the estate for his sons: Marco and Alberto combined into Marcalberto. By around 2008, Marco and Alberto had taken over every stage of production and pushed the cellar further than Piero had gone.

Place

Alta Langa is a high-altitude zone in the southern Langhe hills of Piemonte, distinct from the Barolo and Barbaresco country to the north. The DOCG, formalised in 2011, was built around Metodo Classico sparkling wine from Pinot Nero and Chardonnay planted above 250 metres. The hillsides impose natural acidity and slower, more even ripening on both grapes, which translates to the high acid backbone and measured fruit weight that Metodo Classico wines need to age on lees without losing life.

Marcalberto's vineyards span three communes. Santo Stefano Belbo is the winery's home village. Calosso and Cossano Belbo extend the holdings across different slope aspects. Exact parcel locations are not specified publicly, but the elevation sits in the medium to high range the DOCG requires. On the label, every bottle carries the Alta Langa DOCG designation, which tells a buyer they are looking at a geographically defined, high-altitude Piemontese sparkling wine from these two grapes.

Soil And Site

The Alta Langa hills are predominantly calcareous clay soils over the same Tortonian and Helvetian marine sediment formations that run through much of the Langhe. At medium to high elevations, these soils drain well, keep vine vigour in check, and give both Pinot Nero and Chardonnay the mineral grip and firm acidity that extended lees contact can then build on. Marcalberto's vineyards across the three communes benefit from altitude-driven diurnal temperature variation, which preserves aromatic clarity in the grapes through a longer growing season.

Story

Piero Cane spent his professional life understanding Piemontese sparkling wine from the inside. He was a working enologist, not a grower, and he made sparkling wine for other people before deciding in 1993 that what he had learned was worth applying to his own vines. He founded the estate at Santo Stefano Belbo, planted Pinot Nero and Chardonnay, and built a cellar with the practices he believed in: barrel fermentation, no filtration, underground ageing.

He named the estate Marcalberto after his sons. When they grew up and took over around 2008, they inherited both the vines and the philosophy. Marco and Alberto did not simplify what their father had built. Alberto took the estate's unfiltered, oak-fermented approach and extended it to its logical extreme: a wine made with native yeast, from 100% Pinot Nero, with zero added sulphites at any stage. He called it Nature.

The Alta Langa DOCG gained full status in 2011, years after Marcalberto had committed to the zone. The Cane family was making serious Metodo Classico in the hills south of Alba before the appellation had its current legal shape. The Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri awarded in 2026 to the Caterina Rivella Riserva 2018 arrived more than three decades after Piero first planted.

Vineyards And Cellar

Marcalberto uses a Coquard marmonnier wooden press, a type of press long established in Champagne and, the estate states, the only one operating in Italy. Gentle pressing matters at this stage: whole-cluster or carefully handled fruit pressed slowly and softly extracts juice without phenolic harshness, keeping the base wine clean and the eventual mousse fine.

First fermentation goes into used French oak barrels. The oak is not new, so it adds no vanilla or toast; what it does is allow micro-oxygenation during fermentation, which builds texture and a rounder mid-palate without masking the grape or the acid. The Blanc de Blancs splits its fermentation between steel tanks and used oak to preserve Chardonnay's brightness alongside that textural depth.

After tirage and secondary fermentation in bottle, the wines age on lees in the estate's historic underground cellars. The Millesimato receives weekly batonnage for approximately seven months before bottle ageing, a practice that stirs dead yeast cells back into contact with the wine and amplifies bread-crust and brioche character. Lees ageing for that wine runs approximately 36 months before disgorgement. No wine leaves the cellar filtered or clarified.

Wines

The range holds four wines, all Metodo Classico under the Alta Langa DOCG.

The Blanc de Blancs is 100% Chardonnay, classified Pas Dosé at 12.5% alcohol with 1.9 g/l residual sugar. Fermented partly in steel tanks and partly in used French oak, it shows fine and persistent bubbles, straw yellow colour with golden reflections, and aromas that lean toward toasted hazelnut and bread crust rather than fresh fruit. On the palate it is fresh and agile, with a firm acid line that the Pas Dosé classification keeps unmasked by dosage sweetness.

The Millesimato blends Pinot Nero and Chardonnay in a vintage-dated cuvée. Weekly batonnage for around seven months builds autolytic depth before 36 months of bottle ageing and disgorgement at roughly 3 g/l dosage. The extended contact gives the wine a denser, more toasty character than the Blanc de Blancs, with more mid-palate weight.

The Nature is 100% Pinot Nero, fermented with native rather than cultured yeast, aged in used French oak, and released with zero added sulphites at any stage. This makes Pinot Nero visible in the glass without the safety net of sulphur dioxide: the wine is more volatile and expressive than the other cuvées, with the red fruit of the grape forward and the oak integration more pronounced.

The Alta Langa Extra Brut Rosé Caterina Rivella Riserva 2018 is the estate's prestige wine and the bottle that received Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri in 2026. It is named for Caterina Rivella, a figure the Cane brothers dedicate the wine to.

In The Glass

Across the range, the cellar's no-filtration, no-clarification approach is legible in the glass: the wines have more texture than most Alta Langa Metodo Classico, and the mousse is fine and sustained rather than aggressive. Used French oak adds a toasty, hazelnut quality to the aromatics without ever becoming the dominant character.

The Blanc de Blancs opens on bread crust and hazelnut with a bright acid line running through the mid-palate. The Pas Dosé classification leaves that acidity bare, so the finish is dry and clean with a slight chalky pull from the lees. The Millesimato carries more weight: the Pinot Nero component darkens the fruit slightly and the batonnage amplifies the brioche quality, while the acidity holds the wine together through the finish. The Nature, with its native yeast fermentation and zero added sulphites, reads more wildly: Pinot Nero's red fruit is louder, the texture broader, and the finish longer and more animal. The Caterina Rivella Riserva adds the complexity of extended ageing to a rosé frame, with a fine mousse, pale salmon colour, and the deepened autolytic quality of several years on lees.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Blanc de Blancs. It is 100% Chardonnay, Pas Dosé, fermented partly in steel and partly in used French oak barrels, and aged on lees in the historic underground cellars before release. The wine makes the estate's cellar choices immediately legible: the hazelnut and bread-crust aromatics come from lees contact and the oak fermentation, the fine mousse from gentle pressing in the Coquard wooden press, and the dry, clean finish from the Pas Dosé classification at 1.9 g/l residual sugar. There is no sweetness to soften the picture. Alta Langa's altitude gives the Chardonnay its fresh, firm acidity, and the cellar work builds texture on top of that without adding weight. One glass establishes what Marcalberto is doing and why it is different from most sparkling wine made in Piemonte.

Anecdote

Alberto Cane wanted to make a Metodo Classico wine with no added sulphites, not as a single experimental release but as a permanent part of the range, the same wine, year after year, produced reliably without the sulphur dioxide that virtually every sparkling wine producer uses to guard against oxidation and microbial instability. The challenge was not making it once. It was making it consistently: native yeast fermentation, 100% Pinot Nero, used French oak, zero sulphites at every stage, and a wine that arrived in the bottle without the insurance the rest of the industry takes for granted. When Alberto completed the development and released it under the name Nature, the estate claimed it as the first Italian Metodo Classico produced serially with no added sulphites. The wine went into the range and stayed there, alongside the Blanc de Blancs and Millesimato that Piero Cane had built the estate around. Alberto's father had spent his career as a sparkling wine enologist. The son's answer was a bottle that removed every sulphite from the process his father had taught him.

Final Word

Marcalberto is a small Alta Langa producer making Metodo Classico sparkling wine with more technical ambition than its output of 30,000 bottles a year might suggest. Piero Cane founded the estate on practices that most Italian sparkling wine producers do not use: barrel fermentation, no filtration, extended underground lees ageing. His sons Marco and Alberto kept every part of that and added the Nature cuvée, a zero-sulphite Pinot Nero wine with no precedent in Italian Metodo Classico production. The Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri for the Caterina Rivella Riserva 2018 confirms that the conviction has translated into quality. The Blanc de Blancs is where to begin.

Sources

Open Azienda Agricola Marcalberto in the interactive map →