Francesco Rinaldi e Figli
The winery sits right in the village of Barolo. Not on the hill above it, not on the road approaching it — in it. The Cannubi vineyard is across the road. The building has been here since 1870, when Giovanni Battista Rinaldi walked from Diano d'Alba to take ownership of a farmhouse and vineyard he had inherited, left his job at the large Mirafiore estate, and decided to make something of his own.
Luciano Rinaldi, now approaching his hundredth year, took over the estate in 1941. He ran it for six decades. He is still alive, still present, still connected to a place he has tended since before most living people in the wine trade were born. Today his nieces, Paola and Piera Rinaldi, run the winery, assisted since 2023 by Piera's daughters Elisa and Francesca.
Four generations in a building that has not moved. Not dramatically expanded, not redesigned for wine tourism, not sold. Still here, doing what it has always done.
The Rinaldi family story is entangled with the Barolo village's story in a way that makes the two difficult to separate. The first bottling from the family was in 1906 from their vineyards on Cannubi. The estate was then called Barale-Rinaldi — their sister Margherita had married a man named Barale. In the 1920s the two brothers, Francesco and Giuseppe, went separate ways. Francesco kept the estate and gave it the name it still carries. Giuseppe went on to found the eponymous Giuseppe Rinaldi winery. The two branches of the same family have farmed vineyards a short walk from each other ever since, both traditionalists, both committed to large Slavonian oak and long maceration, both producing wines that take a decade to begin revealing themselves.
The flagship vineyards are Brunate and Cannubi. Brunate straddles the border between Barolo and La Morra, producing wines known for depth, fragrance, and balance. Cannubi is the hill across the road from the winery — one of the most historically documented crus in the denomination, farmed by this family since 1906. The Cannubi wines are celebrated for their elegance, perfume, and complex aromatics. From these two sites, Paola and Piera make wines that are rarely loud, always precise, and often misread on first encounter as reserved. They are not reserved. They are patient.
Paola floats above the significant pressure of living up to the family history. When she talks about the estate, she frames it simply: they are doing what they love, in the place where it has always been done, the way it has always been done. There is no manifesto. There is no story of transformation. The cellar that ages the Barolo is dug into the hill — halls of silence, they call them — where the wine is left in Slavonian oak botti. Long maceration. No new oak. Extended bottle rest before release. The approach has not changed substantially in over a century.
What has changed is the world around them.
During the Barolo Wars of the 1980s and 1990s, Francesco Rinaldi e Figli was one of the estates that chose not to choose. Not because they lacked an opinion, but because the opinion they held — that Nebbiolo from Cannubi and Brunate, made this way, in this cellar, with this much time — was the correct one, and required no revision. While neighbouring estates debated the merits of new oak and shorter maceration, Paola and Piera continued making wine that demanded a decade of patience from the person who bought it.
The market eventually caught up. It usually does.
In 1949, Francesco Rinaldi's Cannubi and Brunate were served at the celebrations marking Italy's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. A bottle chosen for an occasion of historical weight. The fact sits quietly in the estate's history — unremarkable to Paola, perhaps, in the way that facts about a place you have always lived become unremarkable. But the bottle was there. The wine was chosen because it was considered equal to the moment.
One hundred and fifty-five years of the same family, in the same building, farming the same two hills.
That is not a story about wine. It is a story about the decision to stay.
Integrity is the refusal to be rushed. // Arnt
Francesco Rinaldi e Figli was founded in 1870 in the village of Barolo. Key vineyards: Cannubi (2.8 ha) and Brunate (2 ha). Current releases: Barolo Cannubi, Barolo Brunate, Barolo Rocche dell'Annunziata. Paola and Piera Rinaldi lead the estate. Luciano Rinaldi, who ran the estate from 1941 to 2002, turned 100 in September 2025.
