Producer Information
Luigi Calissano used to be a well-known and respected Alba iron merchant in via Macrino, where he was assisted by his three sons: Vincenzo, Pietro and Giovanni. Then in 1872 he began to work limited quantities of grapes with the support of some partner friends. After a few successful years he branched out on his own, leaving the premises in via Macrino for a building known as casa Richiardi. He heard about a system for processing sparkling wines used in France, known as the “champenoise” method, from Domenico Rossano, the estate manager of the Counts of Neive. Rossano had studied with the French winemaker Louis Oudart, who had been invited to Grinzane by Cavour to supervise the production and ageing of his wines, and Calissano also gleaned information from him about a wine called “Petiot”. He decided to produce this wine, and in 1878 he made no fewer than 100 hectolitres, which he sold in January 1879 – along with 200 hectolitres of wines from the Langhe – to the French company Terrier, who paid for it in gold Napoleons (the French equivalent of the sovereign).
