What the Brothers Kept
For most of the Pira family's time on this hill — from the late nineteenth century through to the early 1990s — the grapes went to someone else. Négociants in Alba. The family grew what Serralunga grew best, and other people put their names on it.
Gianpaolo stopped that. He renovated the cellar, replaced the equipment, decided that what came from Margheria and Marenca and Vigna Rionda should carry his family's name. The first Barolo was 1993. Vigna Rionda followed in 1997.
Luigi, his father, was still alive. He saw it happen.
I ask Gianpaolo what he would have done differently. He pauses. Long enough that I wonder if I've asked something wrong.
Then: bottled earlier. His father's generation sold the grapes. He waited until the 1990s to stop. He wonders sometimes what the Vigna Rionda wines from the 1970s would have said, if anyone had kept them instead of selling them in bulk to a négociant in Alba.
You can't recover that. The grapes went. The vintages are gone.
What remains is the hill, the three crus, the family, and the decision — made once in the 1990s, held ever since — to keep what the Serralunga ground produces and put the right name on it.
Luigi passed away in 2021. He saw thirty years of bottles carrying the family name.
Gianpaolo's daughters Annalisa and Elena returned to the estate in 2020 with oenology degrees from Alba. Fifth generation. They grew up knowing the bottled decade their grandfather almost missed.
The hill was there the whole time. The decision was the thing.
Luigi Pira farms Margheria, Marenca, and Vigna Rionda in Serralunga d'Alba. Luigi Pira Sr. passed away in 2021. Annalisa and Elena Pira joined the estate in 2020.
