Italy · Monferrato & Asti

Società Agricola Tenuta Santa Caterina S.R.L.

An ancestral Monferrato estate revived from decades of abandonment, farming indigenous Grignolino and Barbera on the Colli Divini hills above Grazzano Badoglio, with 17-metre Infernotto cellars carved from local tuff.

The producer

Tenuta Santa Caterina sits on the Colli Divini hills above Grazzano Badoglio, a small village in Monferrato's province of Asti, Piedmont. The property was first recorded as an agricultural farm in 1737 and stood largely empty for decades before Guido Carlo Alleva returned to his birthplace in the 2000s and began putting it back together. He recovered more than twenty hectares of vineyards, restored the underground cellars, and replanted indigenous Piedmontese varieties: Grignolino, Freisa, Barbera and Nebbiolo, alongside Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc that had long been present in the area. Winemaker Luciana Biondo and cellar consultant Mario Ronco, involved since the revival began, work to a minimalist brief: indigenous yeasts, barrel ageing followed by bottle ageing in the restored Infernotto, no shortcuts on élevage.

The estate's most argued wines are built around Grignolino, a Piedmontese red grape that produces pale, high-tannin, high-acid wine, more often made for quick drinking than for the cellar. Tenuta Santa Caterina makes it both ways. Arlandino spends nine months in stainless steel and puts the grape's vivid acidity and pale red-cherry fruit in front of you without oak mediation. Monferace takes the same grape through thirty months in oak and another thirty in bottle before release, and emerges as something more developed: dried fruit, integrated tannin, a long dry finish. Between those two bottles and the single-vineyard Barbera called Vignalina, the estate has found a shape that is honest about what Monferrato can do.

Known for

Grignolino in two registers: the steel-raised Arlandino and the long-aged Monferace, plus single-vineyard Barbera in Vignalina.

Notable facts

The story

Seventeen Metres Down

When Guido Carlo Alleva began restoring Tenuta Santa Caterina in the 2000s, the underground Infernotto beneath the property had been out of use for decades. Infernotto are a Piedmontese form of deep underground cellar, carved directly into soft local tuff rather than built from stone or brick, and the tradition is old enough that the architecture has been cited by UNESCO. The ones at Tenuta Santa Caterina descend to seventeen metres below ground. Alleva had them restored using inherited techniques rather than modernised, and they now hold the estate's wines during ageing. Monferace, the long-aged Grignolino that spends thirty months in oak and another thirty in bottle, rests inside those cellars during its entire five-year journey from harvest to release. The wine that eventually reaches the glass has never left the walls of a property documented since 1737.

From the atlas

Società Agricola Tenuta Santa Caterina S.R.L.

At A Glance

Estate: Tenuta Santa Caterina Village: Grazzano Badoglio Region: Monferrato, province of Asti, Piedmont Key grapes: Grignolino, Barbera, Freisa, Nebbiolo, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc Signature wines: Arlandino (Grignolino, steel), Monferace (Grignolino, oak-aged), Vignalina (Barbera, single vineyard) Farming: Symbiotic agriculture, organic fertilizers; organic certification from 2025 vintage

The Producer

Tenuta Santa Caterina sits on the Colli Divini hills above Grazzano Badoglio, a small village in Monferrato's province of Asti, Piedmont. The property was first recorded as an agricultural farm in 1737 and had stood largely empty for decades before Guido Carlo Alleva returned to his birthplace in the 2000s and began putting it back together. He recovered more than twenty hectares of vineyards, restored the underground cellars, and replanted indigenous Piedmontese varieties alongside Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc that had long been present in the area.

The winemaker is Luciana Biondo. Mario Ronco, the cellar consultant Alleva engaged at the outset, has remained involved throughout. Formal organic certification applies from the 2025 vintage.

The estate's most argued wines are built around Grignolino, a Piedmontese red grape that produces pale, high-tannin, high-acid wine and is more often made for quick drinking than for the cellar. Tenuta Santa Caterina makes Grignolino both ways: a steel-raised version called Arlandino and a long-aged version called Monferace that spends thirty months in oak and another thirty in bottle before release.

Place

Monferrato is a broad zone of rolling hills in southern Piedmont, stretching between Asti and Casale Monferrato. The Colli Divini area around Grazzano Badoglio sits in the eastern Monferrato, where Grignolino and Barbera are the dominant red grapes on local labels. The village is small enough that Tenuta Santa Caterina is one of its more visible agricultural addresses.

Grignolino as an appellation category allows the grape to carry either the Asti or Casale Monferrato suffix depending on where within Monferrato the wine originates. At Tenuta Santa Caterina the vineyards sit within the Asti zone. The grape is indigenous to this part of Piedmont and has been grown on these hills long enough to appear in estate records alongside Barbera and Freisa. Its high tannin and vivid acidity make it unlike most Italian light reds: even in a steel-raised version, Grignolino has grip.

Barbera, grown throughout Monferrato and the broader Asti area, anchors the other side of the estate's red range and gives the single-vineyard Vignalina its body and fruit weight.

Soil And Site

The specific soil types, elevations and exposures of individual parcels are not documented in available sources. The broader Monferrato hillside geology in this zone tends toward calcareous clay and marl, soils shared with much of the Asti and Casale Monferrato zones, though the estate has not published parcel-level data. What is documented is the farming approach: symbiotic agriculture, organic fertilizers and microbiological viticulture techniques, all oriented toward returning biological life to vineyards that had been left unworked for decades. Organic certification, formalized from the 2025 vintage, marks the culmination of that process rather than a recent pivot.

Story

Guido Carlo Alleva has described the decision to restore Tenuta Santa Caterina as a significant life project. He returned to Grazzano Badoglio, the village where he was born, and set about recovering an estate that had been documented since 1737 but left effectively dormant for decades. The recovery took two decades and involved not only the vineyards but the underground architecture: Piedmontese Infernotto, deep cellars carved into local tuff, which had to be cleared, restored and made usable again.

The grape choices followed the estate's place. Alleva replanted Grignolino, Freisa, Barbera and Nebbiolo, varieties that define Monferrato's indigenous varieties, along with Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc that had historically been grown in the area. The winemaking philosophy Alleva and consultant Mario Ronco settled on was minimalist: indigenous yeasts on the grape skins, barrel ageing followed by bottle ageing in the underground cellars, no shortcuts on élevage. Monferace spends thirty months in oak and another thirty in bottle before release.

Alleva also joined ten other Monferrato producers in a consortium called Monferace, which argues collectively that Grignolino is capable of serious wine when grown on the right land and aged properly. The project gave its name to the estate's long-aged Grignolino.

Vineyards And Cellar

The estate farms more than twenty hectares of estate vineyards, all of which supply its own wines. Farming follows symbiotic-agriculture principles, which means covering crops, organic fertilizers and microbiological soil treatments rather than synthetic chemistry. Organic certification formalizes what had already been the estate's approach.

In the cellar, fermentations rely on indigenous yeasts found naturally on the grape skins rather than cultured commercial strains. This choice extends fermentation time and introduces vintage variation but keeps the wine more directly connected to the estate's fruit and site.

Ageing follows a two-stage pattern across the range: barrel first, then bottle, with the wines resting in the restored Infernotto until Alleva and Biondo consider them ready. For Arlandino, the Grignolino raised in stainless steel for nine months, the vessel preserves acidity and pale fruit without adding tannin or oak character. For Monferace, thirty months in oak rounds the grape's high tannin and gives the wine the weight to develop further in bottle. Vignalina, the single-vineyard Barbera, matures for around ten months in 30-hectolitre oak barrels and six months in bottle, a gentler oak programme suited to Barbera's naturally high acidity and deep colour.

Wines

The range centres on Grignolino in two opposing registers. Arlandino is the steel-aged version: nine months in stainless steel, then bottle. The grape shows in full without oak mediation: pale ruby in colour, high tannin for its weight, mouth-watering acidity, and fruit that reads more toward red cherry and citrus peel than dark berry. It is immediate and light-bodied.

Monferace takes the same grape and runs it through a very different programme: thirty months in oak, then thirty months in bottle. The oak softens Grignolino's sharpest edges and gives the wine a firmer, more developed character. Released at five years from harvest, it has dried-fruit depth, integrated tannin and the kind of acid backbone that keeps older wine alive. The name connects the estate to the Monferace consortium of eleven producers who promote long-aged Grignolino as a serious Piedmontese wine category.

Vignalina comes from a named single vineyard and is varietal Barbera, a grape that produces much darker, fuller wine than Grignolino with less tannin but more colour and concentration. Ten months in 30-hectolitre oak barrels, then six in bottle. The oak programme adds roundness without dominating the grape's natural fruit and acid drive. Freisa, Nebbiolo, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc are planted across the estate but the specific bottlings from those varieties are not documented in available sources.

In The Glass

Arlandino opens with pale colour and an aroma that leans toward fresh red cherry, dried rose and a faint herbal edge, the last a characteristic note of Grignolino in many Monferrato expressions. The mouth is dry and medium-light in body, with vivid acidity arriving early and firm tannin following through the mid-palate. The finish is clean and slightly mineral, with the acidity keeping it lively. There is more grip here than the colour suggests.

Monferace, after five years between oak and bottle, shows more amber at the rim and a more developed aromatic register: dried cherry, a hint of tobacco, warm spice from the oak. The acidity is still present but sits within a broader, denser profile. The tannin has integrated to a point where the wine holds its shape rather than gripping the palate. The finish is long and dry, with the oak evident but not the dominant note.

Vignalina is a different register entirely: deeper ruby, generous fruit, a characteristic Barbera combination of dark plum and bright acidity that prevents the wine from feeling heavy. The 30-hectolitre barrels add warmth and roundness without the vanilla character of new wood. The finish carries the grape's natural fruit forward alongside a clean acid line.

A Bottle To Understand It

Arlandino is the right first bottle. It is a varietal Grignolino raised nine months in stainless steel, and it puts the grape's character in front of you without the additional complexity of Monferace's long oak programme. Pale ruby, high tannin for a light-bodied red, vivid acidity and fresh red-fruit aroma: this is Grignolino in its most legible form. It also explains why this grape occupies a different space from Barbera or Nebbiolo, the two reds most associated with Piedmont. Grignolino is drier, more angular, more immediately structured. Arlandino makes that case without asking for patience or cellar time.

Anecdote

When Guido Carlo Alleva began restoring Tenuta Santa Caterina in the 2000s, the underground Infernotto beneath the property had been out of use for decades. Infernotto are a Piedmontese form of deep underground cellar, carved directly into the soft local tuff rather than built from stone or brick, and the tradition is old enough that the architecture has been cited by UNESCO. The ones at Tenuta Santa Caterina descend to seventeen metres below ground. Alleva had them restored using inherited techniques rather than modernised, and they now hold the estate's wines during ageing. Monferace, the long-aged Grignolino that spends thirty months in oak and another thirty in bottle, rests inside those cellars during its entire five-year journey from harvest to release. The wine that eventually reaches the glass has never left the walls of a 1737 property.

Final Word

Tenuta Santa Caterina is Monferrato's patient argument for Grignolino. Most of what is grown in this part of Piedmont is drunk young; the estate's Monferace spends five years moving toward release inside seventeen-metre Infernotto cellars. Arlandino shows the grape directly. Monferace shows what happens when you leave it alone for long enough. Between those two bottles, the estate has found an honest shape.

Sources

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