The name may be recent, but the company is 81 years old, having been set up in 1924 by Domenico Alessandria, a grower in Santa Maria di La Morra, to sell the Barolo, Barbera and Dolcetto he produced and bottled.
When his son, Giovanni, took over the running of the business, it continued to bear the Alessandria family name. Then in 1990 Giovanni’s daughter, Graziella, decided with her husband Maurizio to transform the company to bring it more in line with the needs of the contemporary market, and it came to be called “Langavini” as an expression of their love for the wines of the Langa.
The wines are produced from purchased grapes, and are then bottled and distributed under two labels, Cantina Alessandria and Vecchia Landa.
While the company’s philosophy places great importance on traditional wine-making practices, they are also very attentive to new techniques in the cellar, where state-of-the-art machinery is regularly introduced.
The facilities are located on the road that winds its way up though the hills to the village of La Morra, and extend over an area of around 1300 square metres, comprising:
- the wine-making cellar, which is equipped with stainless steel and glass-lined concrete vats (the fermentation is carried out in the traditional style, with a long maceration);
- the storage cellar, where the young wines mature undisturbed in stainless steel tanks holding 470000 litres;
- the ageing cellar, which provide the perfect surroundings for the more thoroughbred wines to develop and mellow in casks made of Slavonian oak holding around 60000 litres;
- the bottling plant, the winery’s showpiece, features an innovative isobaric counter-pressure filling system using nitrogen to guarantee a safe, sterile end product;
- the bottle ageing cellar, where the wines continue to evolve in a cool environment for two or three months before they are released.
The characteristic “Deformed Piedmontese” bottle has become a distinguishing feature of the company’s annual production of approximately 300,000 bottles. Of these, 60% are distributed in Italy, through wine stores, wholesalers and mass market channels; the remaining 40% are marketed abroad, in particular the United Kingdom, Germany and France.