Introductory Letter of the Sustainability Report by Guido Carlo Alleva
"Dear readers, It has been about 20 years since I decided to embark on a significant life project: to restore and reactivate Tenuta Santa Caterina, a historic agricultural estate in the heart of Monferrato, after decades of abandonment. It was, above all, a deliberate and conscious return to my maternal origins, with the intention of also leveraging what I had learned and internalized through experiences in various and diverse territories about viticulture and the quality of wine I wanted to achieve from it. The challenge I had accepted immediately translated into a commitment on multiple fronts, requiring a consistent choice: the restoration of historic buildings; the recovery and distribution of crops; the decisions, particularly regarding the vineyards and their replanting; all had to adhere to a unified "philosophy," an approach that expressed a way of conceiving that extensive and intricate work. Thus, the buildings, starting with the centuries-old cellars, were restored exclusively by local artisans using techniques and materials resulting from wisdom handed down through generations: craftsmanship and profound respect for the "genius loci." The same applied to the lands and vineyards. From the beginning, I sought coherence in aligning agricultural choices with some key principles: ensuring and developing biodiversity within the estate's environment; restoring exhausted soils to their natural biological activity; primarily choosing native or traditional grape varieties of the region to pursue the goal of wine authenticity; minimizing the use of chemical artifices, instead enhancing the potential offered by naturalistic techniques such as mycorrhization of the vine cuttings at planting, exclusively organic fertilization, and the adoption of green manure sowing between rows. In the cellar, in perfect harmony with Mario Ronco, the consultant who has accompanied our adventure from the beginning, the choices were consistent with a minimalist enology." Today, after 20 years of passionate work, Tenuta Santa Caterina is in an advanced process of "conversion" that will formally certify the company as "organic" starting from the 2025 vintage, which constitutes the natural outcome of its journey. However, the project's coherence has also concerned the entire corporate system, which has increasingly been conceived as a true economic and relational organism at the center of which the value of human capital has been placed before purely economic capital. What Tenuta Santa Caterina produces, in fact, can rightfully be considered as the fruit of the work of a collective of people whose individual contribution is always considered an added value. A community, rather than an organization, inclusive in which the predominance of women and the variety of geographical origins are considered a significant and indispensable wealth".
"Dear readers, It has been about 20 years since I decided to embark on a significant life project: to restore and reactivate Tenuta Santa Caterina, a historic agricultural estate in the heart of Monferrato, after decades of abandonment. It was, above all, a deliberate and conscious return to my maternal origins, with the intention of also leveraging what I had learned and internalized through experiences in various and diverse territories about viticulture and the quality of wine I wanted to achieve from it. The challenge I had accepted immediately translated into a commitment on multiple fronts, requiring a consistent choice: the restoration of historic buildings; the recovery and distribution of crops; the decisions, particularly regarding the vineyards and their replanting; all had to adhere to a unified "philosophy," an approach that expressed a way of conceiving that extensive and intricate work. Thus, the buildings, starting with the centuries-old cellars, were restored exclusively by local artisans using techniques and materials resulting from wisdom handed down through generations: craftsmanship and profound respect for the "genius loci." The same applied to the lands and vineyards. From the beginning, I sought coherence in aligning agricultural choices with some key principles: ensuring and developing biodiversity within the estate's environment; restoring exhausted soils to their natural biological activity; primarily choosing native or traditional grape varieties of the region to pursue the goal of wine authenticity; minimizing the use of chemical artifices, instead enhancing the potential offered by naturalistic techniques such as mycorrhization of the vine cuttings at planting, exclusively organic fertilization, and the adoption of green manure sowing between rows. In the cellar, in perfect harmony with Mario Ronco, the consultant who has accompanied our adventure from the beginning, the choices were consistent with a minimalist enology." Today, after 20 years of passionate work, Tenuta Santa Caterina is in an advanced process of "conversion" that will formally certify the company as "organic" starting from the 2025 vintage, which constitutes the natural outcome of its journey. However, the project's coherence has also concerned the entire corporate system, which has increasingly been conceived as a true economic and relational organism at the center of which the value of human capital has been placed before purely economic capital. What Tenuta Santa Caterina produces, in fact, can rightfully be considered as the fruit of the work of a collective of people whose individual contribution is always considered an added value. A community, rather than an organization, inclusive in which the predominance of women and the variety of geographical origins are considered a significant and indispensable wealth".
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