Ricci Daniele

The Ricci winery is located in the Costa Vescovado area of the Colli Tortonesi, which is historically known as Cascina San Leto. It was established in 1929, when grandmother Clementina and grandfather Carlo ran it as an all-round agricultural farm, working alongside the rows of vines, livestock and wheat. In the years that followed, this deep bond with the land was broken, as a result of the economic changes and the increasingly critical competition with other wine-growing areas in the Piedmont region. Daniele, just like his father, lived most of his life away from this unspoilt piece of land, working as a toll collector along the Milan-Serravalle road. Today, 15 years later, more and more wine enthusiasts, both young and old, conservatives and naturalists, travel along that highway to visit the winemaker who has reinterpreted the Timorasso grape in an imaginative and eclectic way. It was a decade ago that Walter Massa arrived and revived the Tortonese production area, and now that this terroir has succeeded in attracting producers and entrepreneurs who, in different ways, have invested in Derthona, there was a need for someone who was willing to give a new direction to the project, inaugurating the concept of Timorasso 2.0.

There's no need to be vague: Daniele Ricci is the anarchic, revolutionary and unconventional winemaker of the Tortonese hills. He is the one who uses long macerations on the skins, refines in underground amphorae, eliminates the use of selected yeasts and does not clarify. However, it is not enough to stand out from the crowd to receive favourable respect and consideration. One must be meticulous and curious, sincerely competent and aware of what one is experimenting with, and Daniele is all this and more. He can't stop taking risks and putting himself on the line, and has never felt more alive than he does now. He does everything in his power to be able to give his son Mattia, who is now studying Enology, a land as full of energy as he is. His artisanal agricultural project is based on principles of respect for the vine and for life. He adopts the principles of organic agriculture in his 10 hectares of vineyards, which are certified by the Bios organisation, and he works in the cellar without intervention, allowing spontaneous nature to take its course.

Known to most people as the Timorasso Boy of the present, he has succeeded in combining his courage and knowledge in the production of red wines as well, from traditional vines such as Barbera and Croatina, while exploiting the Tortonian marl, in which the soils at Costa Vescovado are rich, as a source of natural finesse and evolution. Daniele's challenge is that of knowing precisely how long to wait, to have patience for years before releasing his labels on the market, in order to provide the final consumer with unforgettable glasses of kaleidoscopic artisanal quality.