[Cellar Talks] S01E01 Pelassa Wines

On Friday the 11th of December we will broadcast the first episode of our talk show “Cellar Talks” welcoming Daniele Pelassa from Pelassa wines situated in the Piemonte region. Learn more about our first guest in this short introduction.

Pelassa wines

Based in Montà d’Alba the Pelassa Winery owns vineyards in the Roero Area and in Verduno – Barolo Area. Thanks to consistency in choices, commitment to the job and love and care for details, the Pelassa family captured not only the home market, but also the foreign one, being on the wine list of the best restaurants in Europe, America and Asia.

The scrupulous job of selection and clonal planning in the new plants and the investments in the winery enhance the quality of their grapes and help them reach their main goal: producing wines with a full correspondence wine-vineyard-terroir. The grapes, harvested by hand are softly pressed and picked from the bunch before fermentation begins at controlled temperature. After the harvest red wines carry out malolactic fermentation and then are stored in wine casks made of wood or steel. White wines are bottled in spring and red wines are bottled in summer.

In the last years the firm has concentrated mainly on the cultivation of the three varieties which are the most suitable to the typical soil of the area: Arneis, Nebbiolo and Barbera. Recently their hard worked got recognised even more, after it resulted in some stellar 89-95 ratings awarded by Monica Larner from the prestigious wine critic Robert Parker.

The Pelassa family

The Pelassa winery is very much a family owned and operated company. Mario Pelassa founded the Pelassa winery in 1960, after he had finished his military service. He was able to find a consistent group of customers in Northern Italy. Now he devotes all his time and passion to work in the vineyards.

Maria Teresa, familiarly called Teresina, has always supported Mario and now she continues to help Davide and Daniele in the vineyards, in the cellar and with the customers: she is “simply indispensable”. As they say in Italy, “la mamma è sempre la mamma” (“our mum will always be our mum”).

Davide is a vine-dresser by passion and a tractorist by vocation. All his love and dedication go to the vineyards as well as to his wife and his two beautiful daughters Greta and Giada.

To many people Daniele is the face associated with the Pelassa winery. He not only makes wine by processing the grapes from the family vineyards, but he also enthusiastically promotes it around the world, so that more and more people can get to know it and love it.

Our guest: Daniele Pelassa

Daniele Pelassa, 46 years old, both parents families were farmers-wine growers. Daniele had a passion for marketing and finance in his youth that’s why he decided to study Economics but the love for wine – which he believes is in his DNA – grew up little by little in the last years of University. When he took his degree he went to Germany for a language course and he brought with him some of the families wines,  Daniele understood that the love for wines was too strong and he could not miss the opportunity to keep on running the family winery, that’s why he eventually started working in the vineyards.

The winery was very little at that time, very much concentrated in the local market and for nice but simple daily wines. Soon after they started to invest in new vineyards; now they have 15 ha, a new very comfortable winery and still a lot of passion to make things better and better.

We are looking forward to talking to Daniele and learning about their winery, the great wines and the beautiful region they are operating in. As part of the show we will be tasting and discussing their 2017 Roero Antaniolo Riserva. Be sure to tune in on Instagram Live through our Dutch Wine Apprentice account on Friday the 11t of December, 19:30h CET.

Click here for instructions on how to follow a live show on Instagram Live. If you have questions for our guest you are welcome to prepare them and e-mail them to us or send them as a direct message on our Instagram account.

You can find a link to the recording of the show here.

Pelassa family