Tenute Guardasole

Consisting of just two hectares, Tenute Guardasole is a tiny, forward-thinking winery nestled amidst the peaks of the Boca DOC of Alto Piemonte. Founded in 2009 by Marco Bui and Annalisa Gri, Guardasole is a family-run winery on a mission to produce tiny parcels of wines of the highest quality. Marco embodies a new generation of young winemakers combining talent and unyielding respect for the land from which they harvest, his aim is to rejuvenate the long-abandoned vineyards of Alto Piemonte – a region with a future as enticing as the produce of the Tenute Guardasole winery.

Boca contains the highest vineyards in Alto Piemonte and, as a result, Tenute Guardasole’s grapes are defined by temperate springs, hot, sunny summers and the natural shelter from the Monte Fenera mountain. The unique geological profile of the land – morainic soils consisting of granite pebbles, and volcanic rock flakes – imbues the Nebbiolo grapes that take centre stage in Boca with a personality that’s impossible to miss (and hard to leave once found). The winery celebrates the fruit of Alto Piemonte in their Tenute Guardasole Pio Decimo, a red wine that, despite its power, retains a sense of transparency and assertiveness truly reflective of its origins – sweet cherry, brooding leather and an exuberant cabinet of spice. Guardasole’s minimal intervention approach to winemaking is to thank in combination with their Certified Organic viticultural practices that give Alto Piemonte wines the ideal platform from which to show their full potential.

As you might have noticed by now, we’re huge fans of the under-the-radar wines of Alto-Piemonte. We fell in love with the area upon discovering the mosaic of traditional wine-growing areas here, all using the same Nebbiolo grape as further south in the Barolo and Barbaresco, but each almost lost to the industrial explosion in the area during the 20th Century. Today, there is a host of young winemakers breathing life back into these fascinating appellations, each with a character and story of its own (they’re cracking value too!). Boca and Tenute Guardasole are part of this new chapter up here, and we’re excited for you to try!