Famiglia Anselma

Natural yeast before the castle walls

Natural yeast starts the work before the long maceration tests it. Maurizio Anselma, winemaker and owner at Famiglia Anselma in Barolo, keeps that choice close to the estate’s Nebbiolo. The cellar is not treated as a place for correction. It is where vineyard, vintage, fermentation and time are asked to hold their shape without much interference. Anselma works with a cellar-first discipline, letting fermentation, maceration and aging do the structural work rather than forcing the wine toward polish too early. The family’s Barolo story reaches back to the 1970s, when the Anselmas settled in Barolo with the belief that the wine had to begin with the grape. Giovanna Anselma remains part of that vineyard story, timing the movement between parcels and cellar so the fruit arrives with its freshness and temperature intact. Maurizio manages the property and the vision; Giovanna keeps her attention in the rows. The estate now sits above the village in a new castle at Castello della Volta, a project pursued for over 20 years. Its scale could have pulled the work toward theatre. Instead, the method stays narrow: Nebbiolo, Barolo, Langhe Nebbiolo, and the long way through the cellar.

Nebbiolo held lot by lot

The program rests on separate vinification and long maceration, extended up to 90 days. Anselma has described the frame plainly: “We only use natural yeast and a separate vinification through long maceration of up to 90 days.” That sentence carries much of the estate’s method. Each lot keeps its own terms. Extraction is allowed to develop with time rather than being hurried into a fixed template. The estate works across roughly 36–40 hectares in Barolo, Monforte d’Alba and Serralunga d’Alba, all pointed toward Nebbiolo for Barolo and Langhe Nebbiolo. The holdings give the cellar different voices of the grape, but the portfolio stays deliberately spare. Large oak casks, extended aging and patience in bottle sit behind the wines’ structure. The underground cellar was built to hold at least 500,000 bottles, a practical figure that explains the house’s confidence in waiting. A 2011 Barolo aged for 36 months in large barrels. That kind of timing asks the drinker to meet Nebbiolo as it is, with angle, tannin and length before ease.

Brick corridors under Barolo

The cellar drops below the hill in brick-lined levels, with corridors built for storage rather than spectacle. Bottle cages run deep, and the scale of the place makes aging visible as work, not romance. Above it, the castle looks out over Langhe vineyards and the village of Barolo; below it, the atmosphere is quieter, measured by cask, bottle, wall and waiting. This is a tasting room only after it is a working cellar. The estate’s position at Castello della Volta gives the place drama, but the daily craft belongs underground, where Nebbiolo spends its time away from light and haste. The room is shaped by the discipline of a family that chose one grape and stayed with it.

After the warmer rows

The vineyard work has changed with the climate. Anselma has said, “Once we looked for the sun. Today we have to protect the grapes from the sun.” The shift after 2021 put a new pressure on judgment in the rows, where ripeness is no longer the only prize. The next chapter here is not a new style or a broader range. It is the continued adjustment of Nebbiolo under warmer skies, from Monforte d’Alba, Barolo and Serralunga d’Alba into the cellar at Castello della Volta.