Cascina Bruni

Meeting with Cristiano Veglio, owner of the Cascina Bruni

Cascina Bruni of Veglio di Castelletto, is a family and a wine cellar whose roots sink into Italian history. Start from the Umbrian aristocracy, go through the Napoleonic wars (“Arma Veglio di Castelletto” Battle of France in 1821), and unfold to the Piedmont of the Savoy, intertwined with the history of the passions of a king and his morganic heirs. In 1897 Giuseppe Luigi Veglio di Castelletto decides to produce his first Barolo, so the wine of Cascina Bruni was born. Since 2015 the company is managed by Cristiano Maria Veglio di Castelletto, owner and member of the sixth generation of these noble winemakers. They produce around 40.000 bottles a year sharing differents labels as Rivassotto, Carpegna and Batistot (Barolo Riserva), Marialunga (Barolo classic), Fanin (Barbaresco Classic), Villa Maggiore (Langhe Nebbiolo), Otin Matè (Barbera d’Alba Classic and Superiore), Sot-Monopole Grand Cru…

V.d.V.: What does wine mean to you ? Why are you passionate about wine/winemaking ?

C.V. : For those of us born and raised in Serralunga d’Alba, who own these lands, wine is a way of life, for countless generations, is in our own soul. Making wine is not just my job it’s a real passion for me… I want it to be felt in my wine. Making wine is not a game, is a serious work, to manage a 120 year old cellar means commitment, passion, so much sacrifice, to live in a constant relationship with the vineyards, to reach a perfect balance with the wines and the winery. Respect for traditions must be a constant objective, we must be scrupulous and get an accurate idea of how you must “do” the wine, without leaving anything to chance.

The wine must be a reflection of the terroir, the tradition and the spirit in which I do it.The wine is made above all in the vineyard and not in the cellar.To summarize, making wine is the desire for excellence.

V.d.V.: What allows us to recognize your wine in blind tasting ? What is your signature ?

C.V. : We produce wines in the best possible way, in respect of the environmental sustainable development both in the vineyards as in the cellar work, for a better quality of life in the long term.

The distinctive way of our wines, as a form of identification, is in the brilliant minerality and in the transparency of colors. This is achieved thanks to the Cascina Bruni traditional methods of vinification, our climate, the special soil of our hills, and in the methods of excavation for planting our vineyards many years ago, in fact all were made by hand with the help of our famous Piedmont oxen, in extreme slope conditions. The techniques we used were those kept in secret at the court of the king of Italy, in fact, these soils are the same, and appear in the already historic cadastral maps in the fourteenth century. In other words, thanks to our unique and distinctive terroir.

V.d.V.: Do you have an anecdote ?

C.V. : Cascina Bruni was involved in the resistance during the World War II. This winery hosted Luis Chabat aka Lulù, a famous leader of the French resistance. He was brave, loving risk and disguises, carried out a form of personal resistance to Nazism and Fascism. His actions, real mockery made with many different disguises have become legendary.

« The partisans used Cascina Bruni as a place of stationing the troops and as a weapons depot. For the anecdote he also was a lover of my grandmother’s sister.When my dad was baptized he was taken to church by the Lulu’car, a Lancia Flavia.