A 75 YEAR LONG TRADITION
The Balbiano Winery was founded on 14 September 1941, when the Podestà of Andezeno granted Melchiorre Balbiano the permission for the wholesale of wines and grapes.
Melchiorre, before deciding to make wine, was a very busy manager of some farms in Andezeno: corn, wheat, meliga, cattle and farmyard animals were his daily activity, even if what fascinated him most had always been the grape.
For a long time, in fact, he had worked as a grape broker, a typical profession of the early 20th century, when DOC did not exist and the need to move grapes, departing and arriving from all parts of Italy, was truly compelling.
“The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.”
(Herbert Spencer)
The early 1940s were a difficult period: the war decimated the cities and countryside, food and wine were rationed. The post-war period was a time of great economic recovery, but above all it was the moment in which Melchiorre met Giuseppina Villa, a young girl from Turin, of Neapolitan origins, who quickly became his wife. From their love Carla was born and, in 1948, Francesco Balbiano.
Francesco, known to all as "Franco", helps his father in the daily work of a cellar, learning the trade "in the field". In 1973, after graduating in Chemistry, he found himself at the crossroads: should he continue his career as a chemist or take over his father's business?
His choice was the natural result of what Francesco loved most of all: his land, his traditions. From selling in bulk or in demijohns we move on to the bottle, the cellar is transformed, the winemaking techniques and instruments are increasingly refined and advanced.
The turning point occurs when Francesco decides that it is time to move the production cellar from the historic site to the new site, at the nineteenth-century farmhouse where the family had lived for some time. This is a radical transformation: a long, laborious, delicate but respectful renovation of the ancient structure and which did not only concern the building, but also and above all the "technology" in the cellar.
Francesco's friendship with his colleagues from the Langhe area is the prelude to a radical change. Away with the old wooden and concrete barrels: thermo-controlled stainless steel tanks, filters, pumps, bottling machine, crusher-destemmer, micro-oxygenators appear in the new and well-equipped cellar. The investment in the company is enormous and Francesco, to finance it, begins his export adventure to the USA which within a few years leads him to be present in many American states.
Being away from home for a long time, in those years, was not easy for many reasons: Melchiorre began to age and in the meantime Francesco
In the meantime, the Consortium for the Protection of the DOC Freisa di Chieri and Collina Torinese was born, of which Francesco was immediately appointed President.married to Daniela and Luca, Chiara and Elena were born.
The collaboration with the Faculty of Agriculture becomes increasingly closer and the Consortium finances numerous research on Freisa, which will prove to be fundamental.
In the 1990s the great qualitative revolution of Freisa di Chieri finally reached very important levels, thanks above all to the widespread work done in the area.
The Freisa of Chieri and Balbiano weld a pair into the collective consciencename still very solid today
The experience gained as a producer and as President of the Consortium means that Francesco Balbiano is identified by the Regional Directorate for the Artistic and Ethnoanthropological Heritage of Piedmont as the perfect consultant for an ambitious project which, in the first years of the new millennium, seeks to get started: the replanting of the Royal Vineyard of Villa della Regina in Turin.
