Elio Sandri

Elio Sandri farms Cascina Disa, a compact estate in the Disa locality just outside the village of Perno, in the Monforte d'Alba corner of the Barolo zone. His father Giovanni bought the property in 1965, the year Elio was born; the family had worked land in the area for generations, selling grapes long before the wines carried their own label. Elio has been at the helm since the 2000 vintage, joined now by his children Luna and Riccardo.

The holding is small - around seven hectares, contiguous around the house and entirely within the Perno cru - with Nebbiolo on the south and east exposures at 300 to 350 metres and Dolcetto and Barbera on the cooler flanks. Some parcels are genuinely old: a block of vines planted in 1937 still stands. Everything is farmed organically, with next to nothing added in the vineyard.

In the cellar Sandri works in the uncompromising traditionalist idiom. Fermentations run on native yeasts with long macerations; the wines then age for years in large old Slavonian botti, unfined and unfiltered, with sulfur only at bottling and no new oak anywhere. Releases come late, when he judges the wine ready - his Barolos can sit five years or more in cask before they are bottled. Production is tiny, on the order of ten thousand bottles a year across the whole range, which is part of why the wines were barely known outside Piedmont until an American importer signed him in 2024.