Cascina Fornace

Cascina Fornace says in its visiting card: "We place our trust in the 5 centimeters of humus that will form under the trees every thousand years". 

Respect, care, consistency and fidelity to Nature: this is the undisputed imprint of Cascina Fornace. A small winery well rooted in the sandy lands of Santo Stefano Roero which today has 4 hectares of vineyards entirely dedicated to the typical varieties of the area: Arneis and Nebbiolo. Together with his colleagues - but above all friends - Valfaccenda and Alberto Oggero, he created the SoloRoero collective: a new growing season on the left bank of the Tanaro, entirely dedicated exclusively to native grapes.

It is in Santo Stefano Roero, therefore near the north-eastern border of the Cuneo area, in Piedmont, that the Cascina Fornace winery is located, founded in 2009 from a winning intuition of Emanuele and Enrico Cauda. Run since the beginning according to the rules of organic farming and ever closer to biodynamic management, Cascina Fornace has a vineyard area of ​​about 3.5 hectares, in which the two most common native varieties in the area prevail, namely Nebbiolo and Arneis.

Between the rows, it is worked manually, no synthetic products or herbicides are used, while in the vinification phase only indigenous yeasts are used instead of selected yeasts; fermentations take place without temperature control and the amount of sulfur used is even ten times lower than that allowed by law. Finally, during the bottling phase, no clarification or filtration is carried out in order not to compromise the essence of the taste-olfactory profile of the raw material.

With a range consisting of small but valid labels, the Cascina Fornace winery offers wines faithful to the traditions of the place, expressive and sincere, generous and never artificial.

The Arneis is represented by Cascina Fornace with the "Pedaforno" and the white "Desaja" obtained from non-certified biodynamic viticulture, both intriguing, with a taut and mineral profile. For Nebbiolo, on the other hand, Cascina Fornace Valdovato, Viscà and Roero DOCG come forward, fruity and pulpy, with a rich, long and persistent sip, excellent to combine with the cuisine of the territory.

Enrico Cauda, ​​together with his young brother Emanuele, represent the hands and the heart of Cascina Fornace, founded in 2009 right there, where the great-grandfather once built a kiln (hence the name!) To bake bricks. The year of birth of the winery coincides with the year of Enrico's dismissal from his job in the city: the passion for ecology, for environmental sustainability and for the land, was too strong to be repressed! From that moment on, things start to get more serious: we follow the dictates of organic farming, but going further, totally eliminating chemicals and sipping any type of treatment that would harm the health of the ecosystem. From these micro plots, all located in different areas, characterized by sandy soils, marked slopes and altitudes of up to 350 meters, come some of the most courageous and enterprising labels of contemporary Roero. In the cellar the small volumes allow Enrico and Emanuele to experiment, to practice and also to make mistakes. The containers used are the most diverse, from the cement tanks of the Viscà, to the tonneau, to the barriques to the steel tanks. However, one element unites the different results achieved: olfactory cleanliness, territorial taste and incisiveness.

Cascina Fornace is the testimony that the hard work of the farming world is able to repay and today the Cauda brothers, first generation winemakers, are increasingly convinced that few jobs rhyme with life like theirs.