Italy · Monferrato & Asti

Società Agricola Montalbera

The dominant estate in the Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG, farming more than 100 hectares in the Asti hills around a single aromatic red grape and three ascending tiers of complexity.

The producer

Montalbera planted its first Ruché vines in the Castagnole Monferrato hills in 1983, when the grape was a local footnote with no formal denomination and no export market. Founder Enrico Riccardo Morando committed the estate to it at scale anyway. Today the estate accounts for 60% of the entire Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG by volume, Franco Morando runs the operation as CEO and General Manager, and winemaker Daniel Morellato oversees a range built around three ascending expressions of the same aromatic grape.

Ruché is a floral, lightly tannic red native to Monferrato, producing violet and rose petal aromatics, dried spice, and bitter cherry fruit. Montalbera's three-tier range moves from La Tradizione, a steel-matured Ruché of direct fruit and bright acidity, through Laccento, where one-fifth of the harvest is left deliberately overripe on the vine before the two fractions are blended in stainless steel, to Il Fondatore Riserva, an oak-aged wine from Guyot-trained vines above 300 metres. Each bottle is a different argument for what the grape can do.

Known for

Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG across three tiers: steel-matured La Tradizione, split-harvest Laccento, and oak-aged Il Fondatore Riserva.

Notable facts

The story

Ninety-Five Magnums

When Montalbera released the 2021 Il Fondatore Riserva in 2024, the winery produced exactly 95 magnums alongside the standard 9,500-bottle run. The number was not a production constraint or a marketing calculation. Enrico Riccardo Morando, who founded the estate in 1983 and planted its first Ruché vines in the Castagnole Monferrato hills, was 95 years old when the wine was bottled. His grandson Franco named the bottle after him and set the magnum count to match his age. The regular bottles carry the founder's name. The 95 magnums carry the year he had lived to see the wine made.

From the atlas

Società Agricola Montalbera

At A Glance

The Producer

Montalbera farms more than 100 hectares in the hills around Castagnole Monferrato and accounts, by its own reckoning, for 60% of the entire Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG by volume. That is not a boast about scale. It is a statement about what this estate chose to do when Ruché was still an obscure footnote in Piemontese viticulture.

Enrico Riccardo Morando founded the estate in 1983 and committed it almost entirely to an aromatic red grape that most of the wine world had never heard of. The DOCG covers one village in Asti and a handful of surrounding communes. Today his grandson Franco Morando runs the operation as CEO and General Manager, with winemaker Daniel Morellato overseeing production. Three Morando generations have farmed this ground, and the range they have built is built around one grape and three ascending levels of complexity.

Place

Castagnole Monferrato sits in the Asti province of Piemonte, in the Monferrato hills that run between the Tanaro and Po rivers. This is not Barolo country. The soils are different, the altitude is more moderate, and the grape is different. Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG is one of Piemonte's smaller appellations, geographically concentrated around its home village, and it produces an aromatic red wine from the Ruché grape. The DOCG requires at least 90% Ruché, with the remainder usually Barbera or Brachetto.

The Monferrato hills give Ruché a climate with warm summers and good diurnal range. At the higher parcels used for Il Fondatore, elevations exceed 300 metres and the soils are loamy and well drained, which keeps the roots working rather than sitting in moisture. Cooler nights at altitude slow ripening enough to hold the grape's aromatic character without losing fruit concentration. The Langhe vineyards that complete Montalbera's land holdings sit alongside its Monferrato vineyards.

Soil And Site

The Il Fondatore parcels sit above 300 metres on well-drained, loamy soils. The vines are trained in Guyot, which controls yield and keeps the canopy open to airflow. Montalbera does not de-leaf these parcels, leaving the natural canopy in place to shade the clusters and moderate temperature in the later ripening weeks. That choice slows sugar accumulation and preserves the aromatic compounds that make Ruché identifiable in the glass.

For the Laccento parcels, the harvest is deliberately split: 80% of the fruit is picked at optimal ripeness, and 20% is left on the vine to overripen before a second pass. The two fractions are then fermented and matured together. The overripe portion adds depth of colour, shifts the aromatic profile toward dried fruit and spice, and fills out the mid-palate without changing the fundamental grape character.

Story

When Enrico Riccardo Morando planted his first vines at Castagnole Monferrato in 1983, Ruché was not a commercial proposition. It was a local grape grown in small quantities, difficult to sell outside the immediate area, and not yet protected by any formal denomination. Montalbera committed to it anyway, farming at a scale that eventually made the estate inseparable from the appellation itself.

The Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG was formally recognised in 2010, giving the grape a legal framework and a protected category. By that point Montalbera had been farming Ruché for nearly three decades. The estate's accumulated vineyard holding, now more than 100 hectares, gave the appellation a commercial anchor it would not otherwise have had in its early years as a DOCG.

Franco Morando took over leadership as the estate moved from being a specialist curiosity to a producer with international distribution. The three-tier range, from steel-matured La Tradizione through the split-harvest Laccento to the oak-aged Il Fondatore Riserva, was built to show that Ruché could do different things at different levels of ambition. The founding impulse was planting. The current project is demonstrating range.

Vineyards And Cellar

Montalbera ferments its musts in modern stainless-steel tanks. For La Tradizione and Laccento, the wine stays in steel through maturation, which preserves the grape's primary aromatic character: violet, rose petal, bitter cherry, and dried spice come through without oak overlay. Laccento then ages horizontally in bottle under controlled temperature before release, which rounds the texture without changing the aromatic profile that the split harvest created.

Il Fondatore Riserva takes the oak route. The grapes from the highest parcels are fermented and then transferred to casks for ageing, where the additional time and wood contact adds a secondary layer of dried fruit, tobacco, and grip to the Ruché base. The Guyot training and the no-de-leafing approach in these parcels slow ripening enough to deliver concentration without excessive alcohol.

The split-harvest method in Laccento is a vineyard decision with a cellar consequence. Leaving 20% of the fruit on the vine after the main pick requires two separate harvesting passes and introduces a different ripeness profile into the blend. The blending of the two fractions happens in steel, not wood.

Wines

The three-bottle range is built as a progression through Ruché, from the most direct expression of the grape to the most developed.

La Tradizione is the estate's entry-level and widest-distribution Ruché. It is varietal Ruché fermented and matured entirely in stainless steel, releasing the grape's natural aromatics without modification. Expect violet and rose petal on the nose, a core of bitter cherry and red plum, soft to medium tannin, and a finish with dried spice. The 2023 vintage received a professional tasting note from Wine Enthusiast. This is the bottle that most directly states what Ruché is as a grape.

Laccento uses the split-harvest approach: 80% picked at ideal ripeness, 20% left to overripen on the vine. The two fractions are combined in stainless steel and the wine ages horizontally in bottle under controlled temperature. The overripe component shifts the aromatics toward dried rose, fig, and deeper spice, deepens the colour, and adds a richer mid-palate than La Tradizione carries. Tannin remains soft. The 2016 vintage drew published notes from both Decanter and James Suckling.

Il Fondatore Riserva is the top tier, introduced with the 2021 vintage and named as a tribute to the founder. It draws from parcels above 300 metres, with Guyot-trained vines on loamy soils and no de-leafing. The wine ages in large oak casks for at least 12 months within a 24-month ageing period. The 2021 release comprised 9,500 bottles and 95 magnums.

In The Glass

Ruché from Montalbera opens with aromatic intensity before anything else: violet, dried rose petal, and a top note of candied spice that rises from the glass before the palate registers. La Tradizione delivers this most clearly, with the steel maturation keeping the fruit primary and the finish bright with bitter cherry and a curl of dried pepper.

Laccento shifts the weight. The overripe fraction thickens the mid-palate, pulling the aromatic profile toward fig, darker spice, and something between fresh and dried rose. Tannin across both wines is soft, never grippy, and the finish carries more dried-fruit depth in Laccento than in La Tradizione.

Il Fondatore Riserva adds oak to the equation. The high-altitude parcels bring more concentration and the wood ageing introduces a secondary dimension: tobacco, dried plum, and a firmer close that the two lower tiers do not have. The tannin is more present but still within Ruché's naturally moderate range. Across the three bottles, what stays constant is the floral top note and the aromatic character of the grape. What changes is how much richness and secondary character sits behind it.

A Bottle To Understand It

La Tradizione is the first bottle. It is steel-matured Ruché with nothing intervening between the grape and the glass: violet and rose aromatics, bitter cherry fruit, soft tannin, and a finish with dried spice and enough acidity to keep the wine feeling alive. It is widely available, honestly priced, and gives a clear account of what Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato tastes like at its most direct. Start here and the step up to Laccento makes immediate sense in the glass.

Anecdote

When Montalbera released the 2021 Il Fondatore Riserva in 2024, the winery produced exactly 95 magnums alongside the standard 9,500-bottle run. The number was not a production constraint or a marketing calculation. Enrico Riccardo Morando, who founded the estate in 1983 and planted its first Ruché vines in the Castagnole Monferrato hills, was 95 years old when the wine was bottled. His grandson Franco named the bottle after him and set the magnum count to match his age. The regular bottles carry the founder's name. The 95 magnums carry the year he had lived to see the wine made.

Final Word

Montalbera's choice in 1983 was to go all-in on a grape that the market had not yet decided to care about. Forty-plus years later, Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato is a recognised DOCG and Montalbera accounts for the majority of it. The three-tier range does what the founders' bet implied: it shows the grape at three different levels of complexity, from the most immediate steel-aged expression to a high-altitude oak-aged Riserva that takes Ruché somewhere it was not expected to go.

Sources

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