Cascina Adelaide di Amabile Drocco

History

Located just below the castle of Barolo, Cascina Adelaide has been a working winery with its own vineyards for over 100 years. Its vineyards are what in Barolo and other regions of Piemonte are called "cru" vineyards - meaning that these vineyards have been recognized on the basis of exposure, altitude, and soil characteristics as producing the highest quality grapes in the region. Cascina Adelaide's main "cru vineyards" are Preda, Cannubi, Croera, and Fossati. Despite the incredibly fortunate raw materials, however, Cascina Adelaide was not known, at least in recent years, for high quality wines. This is due to two main factors. For one, the sales strategy of the winery was to sell juice to other producers, not to make prestige wines. Second, the business philosophy of the owners was to save money, and so neither agricultural techniques such as reducing vineyard yields nor modern production methods such as temperature-controlled stainless tanks for fermentation were employed, since they required investment. The winery was not trying to make bad wine, nor did it, but it was satisfied with what it had, and survived on the strength of its raw materials, which were stellar. Amabile Drocco was born during the war and grew up on the land - his father had orchards and some grapes as well. After finishing school, he started his career teaching mechanics and then built a very successful bakery machinery business. But the land was always his first love, and as he saw his own sons grow to be able to run the family business, he decided to take the opportunity, when it presented itself to him, to return to his roots. He purchased Cascina Adelaide in 1999, including its vineyards (with the exception of one that had already been sold off), and from that moment started to apply his own passion, perfectionism, ambition, and experience to transforming Cascina Adelaide into what he saw it could become. **Cascina Adelaide di Amabile Drocco** Among the first things done were to invest in equipment, hire a top "enologo" (winemaker), and hire a top "agronomo" (viticulturist). The transformation that has taken place is impossible to ignore, be it in the vineyards, the winery building (a completely new gravity-fed winery has just been completed next to the original building), or the wines themselves. Even the wines that were already in the "botte" when the new management took over in 1999 show the hand of Sergio Molino, and the wines of the 2000 vintage, the first vintage over which the "new" Cascina Adelaide team had full control from vineyard to bottle, are nothing short of stunning. , . New computer-controlled fermentation tanks are in use. Vineyard yields have been drastically reduced. New clones perfectly suited to the soils have been planted in Fossati and Preda. The aim is clearly (and explicitly) to make wine on the level of the greats of the region, and since the vineyards have the raw materials and the owner has both the passion and the "deep pockets" to match, there is no doubt that Cascina Adelaide di Amabile Drocco will be, in a few years, a recognized rising star. The Wines of Cascina Adelaide di Amabile Drocco are imported for the United States exclusively by Tesori Inc., Santa Fe Springs, CA.