ERNESTO DELLAPIANA

Founder and Owner of Cantina Rizzi

He grows up with the passion of land and vineyards, undisputed protagonists of this territory in the province of Cuneo, and since his childhood, he spent most of his time on the hills of Treiso, spending his entire childhood at the Rizzi farmhouse, owned by the family for generations.

In 1954, Ernesto Dellapiana moved to Turin with his family, where he carried out the entire upper and university academic cycle.

These are years in which people felt the reference to the city and in 1954 the Dellapiana family decided to leave Treiso to move to Turin. Ernesto follows his parents  and in Turin he carries out the entire upper and university academic cycle.

After finishing his studies, Ernesto joins the family paper company, an activity that he undertakes with the determination and tenacity that have always been part of his character.

The city and urban life do not extinguish the fire towards the first great love: the earth.

In 1973 Ernesto Dellapiana, together with his wife Lia, made the most courageous choice of his life: to leave Turin.

The return to the country of origin, Treiso, is a beautiful confirmation of passion for the land and countryside that has continued to burn inside him in all the years of growth and training. Memories are sometimes not enough, something more is needed, and returning "home", for Ernesto, is a dream come true.

Turin remains in the heart, but trampling on the earth and feeling the Langa under his feet, in that small portion of Piedmont where nature has remained that of the past, pure and genuine, is worth all the risk of leaving an important company to undertake the activity of winemaker in the Langa.

A choice that he himself called "courageous", but motivated by his great passion: the earth.

The starting point is the old family farmhouse, reconstructing the pieces missed around the inheritance.

In 1973 Ernesto Dellapiana starts with the first works: he enlarges the property and transforms it, re-adapting the existing premises to make cellars, storage warehouses, aging and processing for wines.

A hard and hard work, which rewards him the following year, in 1974, when he made his first vinification on his own.

In 1984, after  years of satisfaction and hard work, he bought back the neighbouring farmhouse BOITO, once owned by his family, and in 1997, he acquired the farmhouse VILLA MANZOLA. Finally, between 2004 and 2007, Ernesto Dellapiana acquired a beautiful vineyard of 3 hectares in the Cru PAJORE' and the STELLA FARMHOUSE in the municipality of Neviglie (5 hectares of muscat grown in one of the most prestigious municipalities of the Muscat area).

Ernesto Dellapiana not only implemented a quantitative expansion to give to Rizzi Farmhouse the right prestige it deserves, but he made also and above all a qualitative improvement of the company, making it one of the largest, most interesting and important in the area of Barbaresco, with its 44 hectares of vineyards.

Dellapiana defines himself as a continuous researcher and innovator, in the field of viticulture, but also in other fields: he was in fact not only one of the first in the Langa, but also one of the first wineries in Italy to install, in 2006, a photovoltaic system on the roofs of its farmhouse for the production of electricity, thus using solar rays, a clean and renewable source of energy.

The quality of the environment is considered a determining factor in the production of Rizzi Winery, always in the forefront when it comes to protecting the beautiful environment in which the family history was built.