From a 1703 ledger entry in Santo Stefano Belbo to the cru vineyards of Barolo and Barbaresco, Poderi Colla represents one of Italy’s most consequential winemaking dynasties.
When historians speak of Piedmontese wine culture, they tend to reach for a handful of names that recur across the centuries like a well-worn refrain. The Colla family is among the most persistent. The earliest documentary evidence of their involvement in wine dates to 1703, when Carlo Colla and his son Stefano were selling “bottelli di Rosatello” and “brente di vino Negro” produced from their own vineyards in Santo Stefano Belbo. By 1778, the next generation had extended the family’s reach further: Pietro Colla acquired an estate with vines at San Giorgio di Castiglione Tinella, where he cultivated and sold Moscatello. These are not romantic myths but recorded transactions — the paper trail of a family whose relationship with the land was always, first and foremost, a serious commercial and agricultural enterprise.
The nineteenth century brought new currents. When Carpano’s invention of vermouth transformed the fortunes of aromatic Moscato-based production, the Colla family moved with the times. Pietro Colla and his eldest son Giuseppe absorbed the craft, and Giuseppe’s talents brought him into the orbit of Carlo Gancia — one of the era’s most important wine figures — where he became a trusted lieutenant. Yet the family never abandoned its own independent production at Castiglione Tinella, maintaining a dual role that would become something of a Colla signature: working at the highest levels of the industry while tending to their own estate with equal rigour.
It was Pietro Colla, born in 1894, who introduced the Langhe to the discipline of Metodo Classico sparkling wine. Having learned the demanding champenoise technique from Giuseppe Gallese — the man who had himself brought it from Champagne — Pietro applied it with distinction at Gancia and through the development of prized vineyards at Moncucco di Santo Stefano Belbo. His reputation extended well beyond local circles: he was a founding member of the Consorzio dell’Asti in 1932, and his wines found buyers both in Italy and abroad. He was, by every available account, a figure of genuine stature in the region’s nascent wine establishment.
His son Beppe, born in 1930, would prove still more transformative. Taking over the house of Prunotto in 1956 at a moment when Piedmontese wines were barely known beyond their home region, Beppe built it into an internationally recognised name. His contribution to the language and legislation of Italian wine was substantial: he participated in drafting the production regulations for the denominations of Alba, and in the 1960s became the first producer in the Langhe to vinify separately the grapes from its finest individual positions. Crucially, he introduced the word cru onto his labels — a term carrying significant implications for terroir protection and territorial identity that resonates across the industry to this day.
The contemporary chapter opened in 1994, when Tino Colla and his niece Federica united the family’s holdings to establish Poderi Colla in its present form. Three estates form the backbone of the project: Cascine Drago at San Rocco Seno d’Elvio near Alba, Tenuta Roncaglia in Barbaresco, and Dardi Le Rose in the Bussia subzone of Monforte d’Alba. A fourth property, Bricco Bompè at Madonna di Como di Alba, joined at the close of 2016. The generation now guiding the winery — including Pietro, who has absorbed the teachings of his uncle Beppe, alongside Andrea and Monica, whose roles resist easy categorisation within a conventional employer-employee framework — approaches daily decisions and long-term strategy with the same shared ownership that has defined this family’s relationship with wine since the early eighteenth century.
