Benedetta Arlunno: The Woman Guarding Ghemme's Finest Vineyards

The Arlunno family has been farming the glacial moraine above Ghemme since the early sixteenth century. That is not a marketing claim or a vague gesture toward deep roots; it is documented historical fact, provable in archives, tied to named parcels still in production today. When Benedetta Arlunno, the fourth generation at Antichi Vigneti di Cantalupo, steps into the role her father Alberto built from a quality-focused replanting in 1969, she is not reinventing an estate. She is continuing one. The distinction matters, and in wine, it matters more than almost anywhere else.

There is a particular kind of competence required to inherit a great vineyard. It is not the competence of invention or disruption. It is the competence of understanding, of knowing precisely why something works and having the discipline not to change it. That is what Benedetta inherits at Cantalupo: a 34-hectare estate on some of the most distinctive moraine soils in Piedmont, a winemaking philosophy refined over three generations, and a flagship wine that Antonio Galloni scored 98 points and described as "wild, exotic and totally beguiling." The question of what to do with that legacy is not a simple one.

Five Centuries on the Same Moraine

Carlo Arlunno made a decision in 1969 that determined everything that followed. The Alto Piemonte was economically depressed after decades of phylloxera, war, and rural exodus. The sensible move, economically, was to farm for yield and sell in bulk. Carlo replanted instead for quality, a choice that required accepting lower volumes and a longer horizon before the investment paid back. On May 3, 1977, Antichi Vigneti di Cantalupo was formally constituted as an estate winery. Carlo's son Alberto, trained in agriculture and enology, released the first estate-bottled wine from the 1974 vintage.

Alberto has run the estate since then, slowly building what is now recognized as the benchmark producer for Ghemme DOCG. He is joined today by his daughter Benedetta, who represents the fourth generation of Arlunnos to commit to this specific piece of ground. The historical continuity is not incidental to the wine. It is the reason the wine is what it is. A family that has been farming the same moraine for five centuries does not make decisions about it the way a new investor would. The relationship with the land has accumulated across generations in a way that cannot be replicated through technical expertise alone.

This is what the best Alto Piemonte estates share, and what the broader Alto Piemonte story is fundamentally about: not a rediscovery of forgotten vineyards, but the sustained commitment of families who never left.

The Ghemme Production Zone

Ghemme DOCG covers two communes on the right bank of the Sesia river: Ghemme itself and the neighboring Romagnano Sesia. The vineyards sit between 280 and 310 meters, on south and southeast-facing slopes shaped by the retreat of the Monte Rosa glacier over millennia. What that glacier left behind is the foundational fact of every wine this appellation produces.

The moraine glaciaire of Alto Piemonte is unlike anything in the Langhe. It is not the compressed marine sediment of the Helvetian and Tortonian periods that defines Barolo and Barbaresco. It is a complex deposit of granite pebbles carried south from the Monte Rosa massif, crushed Fenera dolomite from the Jurassic limestone formations of the local foothills, schist, sandstone, loam, and sand. The result is well-drained, mineral-rich, relatively poor soil that stresses the vine into concentration without depriving it of the trace elements that translate, in the glass, as genuine geological character.

The regulations governing Ghemme DOCG are among the most demanding in northern Italy. Standard Ghemme requires a minimum of 34 months of total aging before release, of which at least 18 months must be in wood. Riserva designation requires 46 months of total aging, with a minimum of 24 months in wood. These requirements are not bureaucratic formalities. They encode the genuine needs of Spanna on moraine: a grape and a soil that need time to integrate, time to resolve, time to become what they are capable of being. The DOCG permits up to 15% Vespolina and Uva Rara in the blend. Most serious producers, Cantalupo foremost among them, do not use that latitude.

The 100% Spanna Doctrine

Cantalupo does not blend. Every bottling, from the entry-level Ghemme to the single-vineyard Collis Breclemae, is 100% Spanna, on the principle that accessory varieties dilute rather than enhance the voice of their particular moraine.

The logic is straightforward: if the terroir argument for Ghemme rests on the mineral specificity of glacial soils, then blending in other varieties is precisely the thing that would obscure that argument in the glass. The granite pebbles, the crushed Fenera dolomite, the sandstone, the loam; these are the features that make the wines taste like nowhere else. You preserve that by making the purest possible expression of Spanna on those soils, not by managing it with other varieties.

The estate produces four distinct expressions from its 34 hectares:

• Ghemme / Anno Primo. The entry wine, an accessible introduction to the estate's moraine character. Approachable on release, built to develop with time.
• Collis Breclemae. The flagship, from old-vine parcels. Vinous 98 on the 2016 vintage, drinking window through 2046. Tre Bicchieri from Gambero Rosso on the 2000 vintage.
• Collis Carellae. More restrained and perfumed than the Breclemae. Vinous 95 on the 2016: "fresh and vibrant." Drinking through 2036.
• Signore di Bayard. The third single-vineyard cru, named for the legendary knight Pierre Terrail, whose family connections to this region date to the fifteenth century.

Three Crus, Three Soils

To understand what distinguishes Cantalupo's three single-vineyard bottlings, you have to start with the moraine itself. The glacial deposit across Ghemme's production zone is not uniform. The relative proportions of granite, dolomite, sandstone, and loam shift sector by sector, and those shifts determine how the vine behaves and how the wine emerges.

Collis Breclemae sits on the sector of the hillside where the dolomite fraction of the moraine is highest and the vine roots oldest. More clay-bound and mineral, this soil produces slower, more structured fruit. The old vines here concentrate flavor precisely because the soil makes them work. The wine shows it: dense but finessed, with a mineral backbone of cold stone that persists through a long finish. Antonio Galloni describes the 2016 as "only showing a hint of its potential" at release. A drinking window through 2046 is not hyperbole; it is an accurate reading of the structure in the glass.

Collis Carellae occupies a sandier, more granitic sector of the same hillside. Higher silica content, lighter soil, more pronounced drainage. The vine here produces earlier: the aromatics arrive first and lead throughout, with fruit that is floral and perfumed rather than concentrated and mineral. This is Galloni's "fresh and vibrant" wine at 95 points, its drinking window a decade shorter than the Breclemae. That is not a ranking. It is a geological fact about what different parts of the same moraine produce.

Signore di Bayard sits between them in structural weight, named for Pierre Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard, the fifteenth-century knight whose family connections to the Novarese region were documented while the Arlunnos were establishing their first named vineyards. The cru lands on the palate with more immediacy than the Breclemae and more body than the Carellae: the middle voice in a three-part chord. The name carries five centuries of local history. So does the wine.

What the Botti Know

Cantalupo ages all of its wines in large Slavonian oak casks, ranging in size from 15 to 60 hectoliters. At those volumes, the wine-to-wood surface ratio is low enough that no oak flavor transfers. There is no vanilla, no toast, no lactone sweetness. The botti are neutral by design, not by accident.

The function they serve is purely environmental. Large wood allows controlled oxidative aging: micro-amounts of oxygen permeate through the stave slowly and consistently, creating the conditions in which tannin molecules polymerize and soften over time. The wine's own structure does the work. The botti provide the context. This is the logic behind the traditional approach that serious Alto Piemonte producers share with the great traditionalists of Barolo: neutral wood does not add to the wine. It protects what is already there.

The aging protocol differs by cuvee. The entry-level Ghemme spends approximately 18 to 20 months in botti before bottling, meeting the DOCG minimum and releasing while still relatively accessible. The Collis Carellae receives around 24 months in wood, its structure sufficient to absorb the longer contact without loss of the aromatic freshness that defines it. The Collis Breclemae, the estate's most structured wine from its oldest vines, spends 30 to 36 months in cask before bottling, then additional time in bottle before release. The decisions made in the cellar about each cuvee are, in this sense, a reading of what each vineyard sector requires. The botti do not impose a result. They allow the soil to finish what it started.

What She Holds

There is a temptation, when writing about women in wine, to frame every story as a story of change: the woman who modernized, disrupted, brought a new vision. That framing does not apply here, and applying it would misrepresent what Cantalupo is. Benedetta Arlunno's work is not about changing what her father and grandfather built. It is about understanding it well enough to keep it intact.

That requires a different kind of authority. She is working with vines that were planted before she was born, on soils her family has farmed for five centuries, using a winemaking protocol that has been refined over four decades to express a specific geological reality. The question she is answering is not "what should this estate become?" but "what does this estate know that I need to learn?" The first question is easier. The second one is the work of a lifetime.

The Ghemme appellation remains one of the least well-known serious red appellations in Italy, for reasons that have nothing to do with quality. As Giulia Renard wrote in this space in October 2025, phylloxera and the industrial migration of the twentieth century emptied the countryside and the wine disappeared from view. Cantalupo's patient, generation-by-generation rebuilding of its reputation is the reason Ghemme DOCG has any profile at all in serious wine programs today.

A 98-point wine from an appellation most buyers have never poured is a specific kind of opportunity. The sommelier who finds it before the market catches up has something to offer guests that no amount of Barolo comparisons will fully capture: a wine from ground that predates the famous appellations to its south, made by a family that has been there since before anyone formalized what "Piedmont wine" meant, with a fourth generation that has inherited not just the vines but the philosophy that makes them worth keeping. That philosophy is the Arlunno family's real product. Benedetta is its current guardian.