Il Rocchin

The Rocchin estate is set close to the ancient Parish of Gavi, dwelling along the medium Lemme riverside valley, a post Romanesque building dating up to 1100 a.C. and ranked from the Italian Superintendence of Art as high value Monument. The Estate owes its name to one of his old owners.

Earlier the oldest estate farmhouse was surrounded by a nut plantation and by a small vineyard that has been gradually left abandoned till 1982 when Bruno Zerbo and his family settled down and built a new unit that gathered living and production. Zerbo's family goal was also to memorize the old historical place and because of this they called their new-born activity with the same name of the place.

At the very beginning the Estate, that spreads out 60 hectares whose 26 vine-cultivated, was devoted to cow breeding and milk production, side by side with vine growing that took more and more importance with new plantings. Then they came to their first bottling line in 1992. According to the area the most important vine variety to be grown is the Cortese, that gives the white Cortese di Gavi or Gavi, that is designated with the highest appellation ranks of DOCG and that boasts its best features in this zone with a perfect soil mixed of limestone, clay and gravels with thin sandy stripes. Side by side, from its Monferrato vineyards the Rocchin Winery sets an outstanding growing of red Dolcetto and Barbera varieties. The Winery is located in the Gavi Municipality one of the most important Italian wine district and whose town has been during the centuries the geographical and historical link between the Piemonte and Liguria, between the sea and the inland and this territory full of art and tradition is easily connected to big cities as Genoa, Turin, Milan and in any case reachable through highways and motorways.