Cascina Luisin

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The Minuto family, of which Cascina Luisin’s current proprietor Roberto Minuto is the eighth generation, have been producing and selling their wines since the 1860s when they would lug demijohns up to the market in Turino via oxcart. The family began estate bottling in 1913, becoming one of the two first estates in the zone to do so. When brothers Mario and Lorenzo (Roberto’s grandfather) split their holdings in 1952, Lorenzo retained the original winery in the middle of the renowned Rabajà cru in Barbaresco.

Encompassing eight hectares worth of 45 to 65-year-old vines, Cascina Luisin produces nervy, expressive, highly traditional wines from some of Barbaresco’s greatest sites—Asili and Rabajà. Roberto employs low-impact farming, retaining grass and vegetation and employing only copper and sulfur to treat the vineyards, except in disastrous vintages such as 2002 and 2014. The wines ferment without added yeasts in old non-thermoregulated concrete vessels, with macerations lasting between 30 and 60 days (and sometimes as many as 90); aging is conducted in large Slavonian casks custom-built by the renowned Stockinger cooperage; sulfur is added only when the wines are racked, and bottling takes place without fining or filtration. Rather than releasing wines according to a market schedule, Roberto and his 85-year-old father put their wines up for sale when they think they were ready, which ends up being significantly later than most of their peers. Whereas the family has always produced beautifully traditional Barbaresco, Roberto, a trained enologist, has brought precision and elegance to Luisin’s wines over the past two decades without sacrificing any of their gutsy depth or age-worthy concentration.