History
From Alta Langa to Castelletto
In 1800, Giovanni Battista Saffirio left Alta Langa for the hills of Castelletto di Monforte d’Alba. He built a family home there and began making wine, establishing the agricultural and winemaking roots that the family traces across more than two centuries.
Ernesto and Josetta
Ernesto Saffirio was born at Castelletto in 1910. He transmitted both his passion for wine and his attachment to the family land to his daughter, Josetta Saffirio, born in 1952.
In 1975, at the age of 23, Josetta returned to Castelletto and transformed the family farm into a winery focused on fine wine. An exceptional Barolo in 1992 brought Azienda Agricola Josetta Saffirio wider recognition and marked its ascent in the wine world.
The fifth generation
Josetta retired in 1999. Sara Vezza, then 19, took over the family tradition with the support of her parents. Under her direction, the business grew substantially and began expanding into international markets. Sara represents the fifth generation of the Saffirio farming family at Castelletto, with the succession transmitted through the female line.
Sara’s vocation had emerged early. The daughter of an oenologist and a teacher of viticulture, she understood at 17 that her future lay among these vineyards. From 1999 onward, production grew beyond 100,000 bottles made with sustainable methods.
Environmental change and new projects
The estate adopted the organic method in 2004, formalising a stronger commitment to environmental care. Its present agricultural framework also includes SQNPI Integrated Farming and Biodiversity Friend certification.
A separate family-inspired project reached its first bottle in August 2021. After two years spent selecting partners, the team created a Nebbiolo-based Vermouth with The Spiritual Machine and Distilleria Magnoberta. Artist Rita Barbero, known as Purple Rita, then produced a wine-painted limited-edition label for 49 bottles; the concept was conceived as an annual series with a different collectible label.
Brave Wine
In 2023, Renzo Rosso’s wine holding company, Brave Wine, entered the company’s capital. The partnership was intended to reinforce the brand, develop production and give new momentum to long-term projects, while sharing a sustainability-led vision centred on biodiversity and environmentally compatible farming.
Terroir
The estate is based at Castelletto in Monforte d’Alba, in the Langhe of Piedmont. Its Barolo vineyards extend across four precisely delimited MGAs—Castelletto, Perno, Bussia and Ravera—whose distinctions arise from the interaction of soil, climate and human care.
Castelletto is a hill receiving sunlight from east through south. Nearby woods and a small river create cooler conditions, slowing vine growth. Perno has south-eastern sunlight and clay-rich ground. Bussia’s soils contain marine fossils. Ravera forms a natural amphitheatre with strong solar exposure and mineral-rich soils.
The wider Castelletto setting is a mosaic of vineyards, woods, fruit trees, hazelnut groves and meadows. These non-vine habitats form an important part of the estate’s understanding of terroir and biodiversity. Seasonal and year-to-year variation is treated as intrinsic to wine: temperature, rainfall, humidity, season length, sunlight and diurnal range shape ripening, sugar, alcohol, colour, aroma and the timing of harvest.
Winemaking
Viticulture is organised around the health of the soil, vines and surrounding habitat. The organic method was adopted in 2004. The current framework follows an internal environmental, economic and social sustainability protocol and carries SQNPI Integrated Farming and Biodiversity Friend certification.
Soil nutrition is managed with mature humus made on the estate from organic compost and locally sourced manure. The objective is to increase soil microfauna and flora so that organic and mineral matter becomes available to the vines, supporting balanced, healthy plants and grapes that retain the imprint of their soil.
Rooted cuttings spend two years in pots in the estate nursery before planting. This is intended to reduce waste and improve plant health. Green and wooded areas have been created over a period of years, including plantings of truffle-supporting species. Thirty percent of the estate’s area has been retained or replanted as forest. The uncultivated portion also contains an educational truffle area, an orchard, a hazelnut grove and beehives.
The vineyards and their surroundings support hares, roe deer, badgers, foxes, ladybirds, butterflies, bees, earthworms, robins and blue tits. Birdhouses have been installed in the small wood below the cellar, with fat balls and seed supplied during winter. Vineyard care continues throughout the year, both to bring healthy grapes to harvest and to protect the balance of this habitat.
The cellar is built on several levels so that its footprint above ground is limited and its layout follows the sequence of a wine’s life through production. Thermal insulation, process flow and energy efficiency were integrated into the building design. A photovoltaic installation supplies 65% of total energy requirements.
For the Metodo Classico range, extended ageing on the lees is a defining part of production. Across the broader cellar, time is treated as an active component of wine’s transformation and development.
Philosophy
Time, patience and natural rhythms form the core of the estate’s philosophy. Sustainability is understood as reconnecting human activity with nature’s pace: slowing down, listening to the land and accepting that quality requires dedication rather than haste. Time is also treated as a revealing ingredient that changes and enriches wine, people and experience.
The family does not present itself as the author of wine, but as an actor within nature. Its role is to help plants grow while remaining attentive to living soil, vines, surrounding organisms and the microorganisms that enable wine to evolve. Vintage variation is therefore valued rather than corrected into uniformity. Sara Vezza looks for the different sensory effects of each year’s temperature, rainfall, humidity, sunlight, season length and day–night range, and prefers the experience of comparing vintages over a standardised taste.
Biodiversity and environmental protection are declared long-term priorities. The desired model of viticulture is compared to tending a botanical garden: no single element dominates, and complexity, depth and harmony arise from all components working together. The partnership with Brave Wine is framed around the same long-term objective—preserving the landscape and passing a healthier environment to future generations—while the family succession carries responsibility both to those who came before and those who will follow.