Rivetto

The Free Bacchus Story

Enrico Rivetto joined his family’s estate full time in 1999, the fourth generation to work it. He began converting to organic farming in 2009, was certified in 2016, and decided that was not enough. In 2020 Decanter reported that Rivetto was the only estate in Barolo and Barbaresco with Demeter biodynamic status, and that its whole production, about 100,000 bottles a year, would be certified from the 2019 vintage.

Barolo is made from Nebbiolo in the Langhe hills south of Alba, in Piedmont. The grape is pale in the glass and high in tannin and acidity, so young Barolo can feel severe and good bottles take years to open up. Rivetto’s hill lies between the village of Sinio and the Barolo commune of Serralunga d’Alba.

Biodynamics cost Rivetto vineyard. The last step, he said, was bringing in animals, which worried him because the estate had never kept any; he chose donkeys, and their manure now goes into the estate’s compost. Animals need room, and in a zone where a hectare of land can cost more than €1.2 million he gave up 1.2 hectares of vines, leaving 15 in production. At Briccolina, his most prized cru, 50 vines came out to make room for a border of lavender, bushes and trees against neighbouring vineyards that are not farmed organically, and more than two kilometres of hedges now run through the Lirano vineyard.

The EU organic register lists the estate under Bioagricert for its grapes and its wine, and Demeter Italia lists it for wine grapes and wine. Rivetto has also belonged to Biodyvin, a growers’ association for biodynamic estates, since 2019.

The Barolo del Comune di Serralunga d’Alba, blended from the Serra, Manocino and San Bernardo vineyards, is the flagship. Briccolina, the single-cru Barolo farmed entirely by hand, sits above it in the range. The Langhe Nebbiolo, from vines a few steps outside the Barolo boundary, is the easy way in.