Convincing the Neighbours
When Chiara Boschis stepped into the Barolo Boys movement in the 1980s, she was the only woman among them. She has said she came from the feminist movement, that she wanted to change the rules. She bought E. Pira e Figli with a loan her grandparents — who ran the Borgogno estate — guaranteed for her, after the last of the Pira line died without a male heir and the two sisters who inherited could not manage it alone.
She made her wine. She earned her place.
Then, in 2015, she did something that required a different kind of patience entirely. She began convincing her neighbours.
Cannubi is Barolo's most famous single vineyard — twenty-seven producers farm parcels on its slopes. Chiara approached them one by one and asked them to farm organically. Not her parcel: the whole hill. She had been certified organic herself since 2010. But she understood that a single organic parcel inside a conventionally farmed cru is a partial argument. She wanted the full one.
Twenty-four of twenty-seven said yes. The first official organic district in the Barolo appellation was declared — not through regulation, not through institutional pressure, but through one woman asking the same question, at different kitchen tables, until most of her neighbours agreed.
The three who said no are still there. The hill is still mostly clean. She is still asking.
E. Pira e Figli has been in Cannubi since the 17th century. Chiara Boschis has led the estate since the 1980s.
