Why it matters
The producer
In 1870 Giuseppe Grasso packed up his four children and left Calosso, in the province of Asti, for a farmhouse called Cascina Vallegranda on the hills above Treiso. He bought the property, put down roots in the Barbaresco DOCG zone, and started a family estate that four generations later still operates from the same address. The Grasso name is common enough in Piemonte to cause confusion; Ca' del Baio is the Treiso branch, and the current owner is Giulio Grasso, born 1959, who has run the estate through the modern period. In 2016, Gambero Rosso named him Viticulturist of the Year in the Italian Wine Guide, a recognition that placed the estate alongside much larger and better-known names in the Barbaresco zone.
The house philosophy is fruit before wood. Some wines age in large casks, some in barriques, but the target across the range is balanced vine development and a wine where the fruit character leads and the oak follows quietly behind it.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Treiso is a commune on the southern hillside of the Tanaro valley, set within the Barbaresco DOCG but about three kilometres south of the town of Barbaresco itself. The terrain is hillier and more fragmented than the flatter slopes closer to the river, and Treiso has its own recognised cru vineyards, including Asili. The Barbaresco DOCG covers a small cluster of communes in the southern Langhe and is built around Nebbiolo, the grape that produces Barbaresco and Barolo. Within that zone, Treiso gives wines with its own topographic character, cooled by altitude and shaped by the specific exposure of each hillside parcel. The label for Ca' del Baio's flagship reads Barbaresco Asili DOCG: the DOCG names the zone, Asili names the specific cru within Treiso, and Nebbiolo is the only permitted grape.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The Asili vines span roughly four decades of planting, from 1957 to 1999. The Dolcetto d'Alba Lodoli parcel dates to 1961 and has spent over sixty years putting down roots in Treiso soil, which helps explain the directness and depth of the wine despite its short ageing window. The Barbera d'Alba Paolina draws from multiple parcels across the estate.
In the cellar, the estate uses large casks for some wines and barriques for others, choosing the vessel by the wine's character rather than applying a single formula. The guiding principle is that fruit notes should be primary in the finished bottle. Some wines mature in large casks and others in barriques. The result across the range is wines with round texture, clear fruit, and no excess extraction.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range covers three grapes, three appellations, and three very different drinking windows.
Barbaresco Asili DOCG is the estate's Nebbiolo from the Asili cru. This is Langhe's most demanding grape in one of the zone's recognised parcels. The wine carries the grip, acidity, and structural depth that Nebbiolo produces on altitude-cooled hillside clay in Treiso: firm tannin, lifted red fruit, and a long finish with bitter cherry and dried rose. At three years from vintage it opens sufficiently to drink; at ten to fifteen years in favourable vintages it reaches its fuller depth. Patient cellaring is rewarded here in a way that few wines from the estate's price range can claim.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Barbaresco Asili DOCG. The cru wine, the flagship, the bottle that puts Ca' del Baio's address and ambition in the clearest focus. It is Nebbiolo from a named parcel in Treiso, aged in a mix of large cask and barrique, with fruit kept at the front and oak in the background. In the glass it gives dried cherry, rose, and a firm tannin line that softens at the edges. The acidity is bright and the finish long. Open it at three years from vintage for an introduction to what Treiso Nebbiolo produces, or put it down for a decade to find what the cru adds when the tannin integrates and the fruit deepens.