Why it matters
The producer
Tenuta Santa Caterina sits on the Colli Divini hills above Grazzano Badoglio, a small village in Monferrato's province of Asti, Piedmont. The property was first recorded as an agricultural farm in 1737 and had stood largely empty for decades before Guido Carlo Alleva returned to his birthplace in the 2000s and began putting it back together. He recovered more than twenty hectares of vineyards, restored the underground cellars, and replanted indigenous Piedmontese varieties alongside Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc that had long been present in the area.
The winemaker is Luciana Biondo. Mario Ronco, the cellar consultant Alleva engaged at the outset, has remained involved throughout. Formal organic certification applies from the 2025 vintage.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Monferrato is a broad zone of rolling hills in southern Piedmont, stretching between Asti and Casale Monferrato. The Colli Divini area around Grazzano Badoglio sits in the eastern Monferrato, where Grignolino and Barbera are the dominant red grapes on local labels. The village is small enough that Tenuta Santa Caterina is one of its more visible agricultural addresses.
Grignolino as an appellation category allows the grape to carry either the Asti or Casale Monferrato suffix depending on where within Monferrato the wine originates. At Tenuta Santa Caterina the vineyards sit within the Asti zone. The grape is indigenous to this part of Piedmont and has been grown on these hills long enough to appear in estate records alongside Barbera and Freisa. Its high tannin and vivid acidity make it unlike most Italian light reds: even in a steel-raised version, Grignolino has grip.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The estate farms more than twenty hectares of estate vineyards, all of which supply its own wines. Farming follows symbiotic-agriculture principles, which means covering crops, organic fertilizers and microbiological soil treatments rather than synthetic chemistry. Organic certification formalizes what had already been the estate's approach.
In the cellar, fermentations rely on indigenous yeasts found naturally on the grape skins rather than cultured commercial strains. This choice extends fermentation time and introduces vintage variation but keeps the wine more directly connected to the estate's fruit and site.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range centres on Grignolino in two opposing registers. Arlandino is the steel-aged version: nine months in stainless steel, then bottle. The grape shows in full without oak mediation: pale ruby in colour, high tannin for its weight, mouth-watering acidity, and fruit that reads more toward red cherry and citrus peel than dark berry. It is immediate and light-bodied.
Monferace takes the same grape and runs it through a very different programme: thirty months in oak, then thirty months in bottle. The oak softens Grignolino's sharpest edges and gives the wine a firmer, more developed character. Released at five years from harvest, it has dried-fruit depth, integrated tannin and the kind of acid backbone that keeps older wine alive. The name connects the estate to the Monferace consortium of eleven producers who promote long-aged Grignolino as a serious Piedmontese wine category.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Arlandino is the right first bottle. It is a varietal Grignolino raised nine months in stainless steel, and it puts the grape's character in front of you without the additional complexity of Monferace's long oak programme. Pale ruby, high tannin for a light-bodied red, vivid acidity and fresh red-fruit aroma: this is Grignolino in its most legible form. It also explains why this grape occupies a different space from Barbera or Nebbiolo, the two reds most associated with Piedmont. Grignolino is drier, more angular, more immediately structured. Arlandino makes that case without asking for patience or cellar time.