Company Profile

In 1993, Tino Colla and his niece, Federica, decided to join forces and create a new wine venture in the setting of the Langhe Albesi, driven by their attachment to their roots – those of a family that had been wine growers for generations – and by the desire to build something all their own while at the same time abiding by tradition.

Poderi Colla comprises the following properties: Cascine Drago in Alba; Tenuta Roncaglia di Barbaresco and the Dardi Le Rose estate in Monforte. Three properties occupying outstanding sites, each specialising in growing different types of wine and covering a near-complete spectrum of Alba winemaking.

Beppe Colla, Federica’s father and Tino’s brother, makes a fundamental contribution: over 60 years (his first harvest was back in 1949) of unique, impassioned, top-level experience in the production of Alba’s fine reds.

Tino’s eldest son, Pietro, has been playing an active role on the Colla team since 2007; he was born in 1980 and has followed in the family’s footsteps by attending the Alba Winemaking School and graduating in oenology at Turin University in 2006.

All the wine - around 150,000 bottles yearly - is made from grapes grown on the estate, thus ensuring greater direct control at every step in the process, from vineyard cultivation to winemaking, maturing and bottling.

Philosophy

Our number one priority is the concept of the naturalness and originality of wines hailing from exceptional, indeed unique, vineyards and produced using a winemaking technique that respects the grapes and the wine and sets out to maintain and enhance the latter’s original characteristics without attempting to force its flavour into fashionable stereotypes.

Most of today’s wines tend to be very similar despite being obtained from very different climates and varieties: dense, dark wines with a high alcohol content and a great deal of wood, difficult to drink or match with food. We want to move in an entirely different direction, seeking not extremes and overstatement, but balance, subtlety and original nuances.

Our wines are not “high-tech”. They are “human”, with an outstanding natural concentration bestowed by the terroir and the vine (not by wood or machinery) and well-balanced components. They are wines made to be relished, not to astound at perfunctory tastings.

The key adjectives we may use to highlight their style are:

1. Classic: Not traditional, which may have a negative connotation. By classic, we mean showing continuity with the fine wines of the past.

2. Original: The qualities of the grapes and terroir are paramount.

1. Natural: From vineyard to bottle, from grape to wine, with as little interference, technological manipulation (concentration, filtration etc.) and additives (enzymes, tannins, wood etc.) as possible.

4. Enjoyable

5. Quaffable

6. Easy to match with food: which it complements, and which in turn complements the wine.

These are the hardest wines to produce because they need to be naturally good, as we add nothing and correct nothing.