Castiglione Falletto, Piedmont, Italy
In the beginning of the 20th century, the Vietti family began bottling its own wines. Patriarch Mario Vietti started the estate in 1919 and made the first Vietti wines, selling most of the production in Italy. His most significant achievement was to transform the family farm, composed of many disparate fields, into a grape-growing and wine-producing business.
In 1952, Alfredo Currado (Luciana Vietti’s husband) took over and continued to produce high-quality wines from their own vineyards, as well as from purchased grapes. The family-run business soon grew to one of the top-level producers in Piemonte and was one of the first wineries in the region to export its products to the US market. Alfredo was one of the first to select and vinify grapes from single vineyards (such as Brunate, Rocche, and Villero). This was a radical concept at the time, but today virtually every vintner making Barolo and Barbaresco wines offers “single-vineyard” or “cru-designated” wines. Alfredo is also called the “father of Arneis,” as in 1967 he invested a lot of time to rediscover and understand this nearly lost grape variety. Today Arneis is the most famous white wine from Roero, an area north of Barolo.
The Currados have three children, Emanuela, Elisabetta, and Luca. In 1970, Alfredo and Luciana, with the friendship and support of some local artists, started to update their wine labels. The story goes that one long winter evening in Langhe, a group of artists, eating and drinking together with them at the table, suggested that they “dress their artwork in the winery” with “an artwork on the label.” The new Vietti labels, eye-catching on any shelf, were born.
In 1990 Luca Currado, Alfredo and Luciana’s son and an oenologist who interned at various prestigious houses in Bordeaux and California, officially began his winemaking career at the family property. Luca now oversees Vietti’s extensive vineyard plantings in addition to handing the winemaking. His wife, Elena Penna, also started working in the “family winery;” she does the marketing and public relations. The business is a successful one, growing with each generation. Vietti is a strong family-run operation and a specialist in single-vineyard expressions of DOC and DOCG Piedmontese wines.