From the atlas
Braida di Giacomo Bologna
At A Glance
- Village: Rocchetta Tanaro, Asti province
- Subzone: Basso Monferrato, Piedmont
- Founded: 1961
- Grape: Barbera (primary), Grignolino, Moscato d'Asti
- Listed wines: Bricco dell'Uccellone, Barbera d'Asti Superiore
- Vineyards: 70+ hectares across Monferrato and Langhe
- Elevation: 250 to 450 metres
- Recognition: Marchio Storico di Interesse Nazionale, October 2024
The Producer
Braida di Giacomo Bologna sits on a hill road in Rocchetta Tanaro, a village of roughly 1,200 people in the sandy uplands of Asti province, Piedmont. Giacomo Bologna founded it in 1961 at a moment when Barbera was not taken seriously as a cellar wine: it filled carafes in Piedmontese trattorias, blended into bulk, and moved out quickly on its sharp, undisciplined acidity. Giacomo looked at the same grape and saw something the trade had written off.
His answer was two decisions made together: harvest later and age in French oak. The late pick let sugars accumulate on the vine while acidity softened, changing the physiological character of the fruit before it ever reached the cellar. The barriques did something no large Slavonian cask in the region was doing: they added tannin, smoothed the mouth feel, and gave the wine a reason to stay in a bottle for years. Neither decision was common in Asti in the early 1980s. Both turned out to be consequential well beyond Rocchetta Tanaro.
In October 2024, the Italian Ministry of Business and Made in Italy awarded Braida the Marchio Storico di Interesse Nazionale, a designation reserved for companies that have maintained production excellence and a strong territorial bond for more than half a century. It is one of very few wine estates in Italy to hold it.
Place
Rocchetta Tanaro is in the Basso Monferrato, the lower rolling hills that lie between the Po plain and the steeper slopes of the Langhe further south. The soils here are lean and sandy, a different register from the clay and limestone that dominates much of Barolo and Barbaresco country. In those sandy soils, Barbera gives wines that are softer and more harmonious than the grape produces on heavier ground: less extracted, more fluid, with acidity that can be managed rather than fought.
In the local dialect, a bricco is a hillside with a particular slope and sunny exposure, the kind of position that coaxes more even ripening from the vines. Braida's vineyards run from 250 to 450 metres above sea level across hillsides in the Monferrato and Langhe, and the most important parcels carry bricco in their names. The continental climate swings widely: winters can reach minus ten degrees, summers push to thirty-five, and the spring and autumn sit moderately between. That temperature range drives the slow, extended ripening that Giacomo's late-harvest approach was built to exploit.
The appellation on the estate's top wines is Barbera d'Asti, a DOC covering the Asti and Alessandria provinces, with Superiore as the elevated tier requiring longer ageing and lower yields.
Soil And Site
The sandy soils of the Basso Monferrato drain quickly and hold warmth through the afternoon. They are lean in the sense that vine roots must search for nutrients, which tends to limit yields naturally and concentrate what remains in the berry. For Barbera, a grape with naturally high acidity, sandy ground encourages a rounder fruit profile compared to the firm, angular character the grape shows on clay. Braida's hilltop parcels face south and southwest where possible, maximising the sun hours that allow late-harvested Barbera to reach full physiological maturity before the autumn rains arrive.
Story
When Giacomo Bologna started experimenting with Barbera in the 1970s and early 1980s, the grape's reputation in Italy was the opposite of what it is today. It was a workhorse variety: productive, acidic, and useful for volume. Producers in Asti and Alba sold it young, moved it fast, and planted it where finer varieties like Nebbiolo would not ripen. No one aged it in new oak. Almost no one bottled it from a single named hillside.
Giacomo changed both of those things at once. He began harvesting his best Barbera parcels later than every neighbour, holding the fruit on the vine until acidity dropped and sugar climbed. Then he put the wine into small French oak barriques, 225-litre casks that were in use in Bordeaux but virtually unknown as a tool for Piedmontese red wine at the time. The 1982 harvest was the proof of concept. Those grapes spent 18 months in new French oak before the wine went to bottle. It emerged in 1985 as Bricco dell'Uccellone, named for a single hillside in Rocchetta Tanaro.
The wine found an audience quickly, and other producers in Piedmont and further afield noticed. By the late 1980s the phrase Super Barbera had entered circulation, modelled on the Supertuscan category that had emerged a decade earlier. Braida's Uccellone had provided the template. The estate continued building the range in Rocchetta Tanaro, and now farms more than 70 hectares across Monferrato and Langhe through its 63rd vintage.
Vineyards And Cellar
Braida's parcels sit on hillside positions between 250 and 450 metres, with the most important vineyards named by their individual bricco. Lower yields than the regional norm were central to Giacomo's approach from the first Uccellone harvest: concentrating fewer grapes per vine produced fruit with more depth and less of the dilute, high-acid character that gave Barbera its bulk-wine reputation.
In the cellar, the style varies by wine and vineyard. The flagship wines use French oak barriques, as Giacomo established for the 1982 vintage. Montebruna, a Barbera d'Asti from the estate range, goes into Slavonian oak instead, a larger cask format with less wood influence and a more classically Piedmontese weight. Curej, sourced from the San Bernardo hill, spends 15 days on its skins during maceration before moving to large oak for three months, a shorter contact time that preserves the fresh fruit character of the grape rather than building extended tannin.
Wines
Barbera is the spine of everything Braida makes. The range moves from a frizzante Barbera through single-vineyard crus to the estate's founding wine.
Bricco dell'Uccellone is a Barbera d'Asti Superiore from a single named hillside in Rocchetta Tanaro. It was the wine that proved the French-oak, late-harvest approach would work with this grape. Yields are low, the wine carries the Superiore designation, and it is the most cellar-demanding bottle in the range.
Bricco della Bigotta is a second single-vineyard cru from the Basso Monferrato hills, a Barbera d'Asti Superiore in the same concentrated style as Uccellone: deep, dark-fruited, built for ageing.
Montebruna is a Barbera d'Asti aged in Slavonian oak rather than French barriques, which produces a softer, more immediate wine with less wood-driven grip. The back label carries lines from Paolo Conte, a musician and poet from Asti, giving the wine a cultural connection to the territory it comes from.
Curej comes from Barbera grown on the San Bernardo hill, vinified with 15 days of maceration and three months in large oak. Purplish-ruby in the glass, it shows blue raspberry, fresh cherry, wisteria, blond tobacco, and licorice on the nose, then delivers a dry, fresh palate with the grape's natural acidity held in check by the fruit weight the site produces.
La Monella is a frizzante Barbera: lighter, lively, and built for early drinking. The range also includes Grignolino d'Asti and Moscato d'Asti, two varieties that take the estate beyond Barbera while staying in the same Piedmontese hillside world.
In The Glass
The Braida house style across the Barbera range is depth over sharpness. Where Barbera in other hands can hit with a hard, angular acidity, the late-harvest approach at Braida gives the wines a softer, more generous fruit weight at the centre of the palate, with acidity present as freshness rather than as an edge.
The prestige crus, Uccellone and Bigotta, show dark plum and blackberry fruit, rounded by their time in small French oak. There is tannin here, more than Barbera typically offers from a lighter cellar regime, and it gives the wines grip and length. The oak is noticeable in younger vintages and integrates as the wines age.
Curej sits in the middle of the range temperamentally: the nose is complex and aromatic (blue raspberry, wisteria, tobacco, licorice), the palate is dry and fresh, and the three months in large oak adds enough weight to carry the aromatics without closing them down. Montebruna, in its Slavonian oak, is more open than the crus, with a warm, plummy generosity and a soft finish. La Monella, the frizzante, is a different proposition entirely: light, gently sparkling.
A Bottle To Understand It
Bricco dell'Uccellone is the wine to open first. It is the wine Giacomo Bologna built his argument around: a single hillside in Rocchetta Tanaro, Barbera harvested later than the neighbours, 18 months in new French oak for the first vintage in 1982. In the glass it is dark and concentrated, with plum, blackberry and a warm dried-herb edge from the oak ageing. The acidity is present but softened by the fruit weight and the wood, and the tannin gives the wine a cellar arc that Barbera rarely achieves without this kind of intervention. It is not a wine for immediate cracking open over dinner; it rewards an hour in a decanter or a few years in a rack. Start here to understand what Giacomo changed, and what the grape becomes when a sandy hillside in Asti is taken as seriously as any site in the Langhe.
Anecdote
In 1982, Giacomo Bologna waited longer than anyone else in Rocchetta Tanaro before picking his Barbera. His neighbours had already brought their fruit in and were moving on to the cellar work of autumn. Giacomo let the grapes hang, watching the sugars build and the acidity ease off. When he finally picked, he pressed the fruit and put it into French oak barriques, 225-litre casks from Bordeaux that were almost unheard of in Asti. The wine sat in new wood for 18 months. In 1985, it came out of the cellar under the name Bricco dell'Uccellone, carrying the name of the hillside it had come from. Winemakers across Piedmont tried the wine and went back to their own estates to think about what had just happened. Within a few years, barrique-aged single-vineyard Barbera had a name, Super Barbera, and Uccellone was the wine other producers pointed at when they wanted to explain what they were trying to do.
Final Word
Braida di Giacomo Bologna spent sixty-three vintages making the case that Barbera, from the right hill in Basso Monferrato and with the right cellar work, is a grape worth ageing and worth seeking out. The 2024 historic brand designation from the Italian Ministry put that argument into official language. The Bricco dell'Uccellone remains the clearest version of it: dark and concentrated, built from a single hillside that Giacomo Bologna chose to take seriously when no one else did.
Sources
- https://www.braida.it/en/
- https://www.braida.it/en/rocchetta-tanaro/
- https://escapementmagazine.com/articles/giacomo-bologna-braida-bricco-dell-uccellone/
- https://www.ansa.it/amp/piemonte/notizie/2024/10/08/vino-braida-entra-tra-i-marchi-storici-di-interesse-nazionale_3a18144e-10a8-4f96-ba04-3e7a897c7000.html
- https://www.braida.it/en/curej/