Bersano's Nizza Cremosina: Barbera from the Family's First Vineyard
A Tre Bicchieri 2027 winner from the hill Bersano bought in 1912, and what the Nizza DOCG asks of its Barbera.
Il Vino Bello ·
Some wines are worth knowing because of a score, and some because of where they come from. Cremosina from Bersano has both this autumn. The 2023 vintage is one of three Nizza wines on Gambero Rosso's Tre Bicchieri 2027 list for Piemonte, published on 16 October, and the vineyard it comes from is the first one the Bersano family ever bought, in 1912, in Nizza Monferrato.
A hill named for its beauty
Bersano's own vineyard notes trace the Cremosina back to the 16th century. The estate says the name comes from the Spanish hermosa, meaning beautiful or splendid, a nod to the old Spanish dominion over the Monferrato. Today the farm, Cascina Cremosina, has 12 hectares of vines at about 250 metres, facing south and south-west, on soils the estate describes as limestone and clay, with sand added in the wine's technical sheet. All of it is planted to Barbera for Nizza.
The timeline on the estate's site sets out how the house grew around it. Giuseppe Bersano founded the company in Nizza Monferrato in 1907 and bought the Cremosina and its surrounding vineyards in 1912. His son Arturo, a lawyer by training, fell for these hills among the Cremosina rows, took over his father's business in 1935 and, in the estate's words, made it one of the most important cellars in Piemonte. In 1985 Ugo Massimelli took the helm, and in 2021 his daughter Federica became the first woman to lead Bersano. The company now farms 230 hectares across ten cascine in the Monferrato and the Langhe.
What makes it a Nizza
The Associazione Produttori del Nizza describes its hills as the place where Barbera finds its most refined and long-lived expression. According to the association, the name began in 2000 as a subzone of Barbera d'Asti Superiore and became a DOCG of its own in 2014, when a Riserva and the option of naming the vineyard on the label were added. The wine must be 100 percent Barbera from 18 comuni around Nizza Monferrato, with yields capped at 7 tonnes per hectare. A Nizza needs at least 18 months of ageing, six of them in wood, counted from 1 January after the harvest; a Riserva needs 30 months, twelve in wood.
The denomination is small but growing. The association's 2025 press kit reports 1,093,892 bottles sold in 2024, up 5 percent on the year before, and an average shelf price of 28 euros in a wine shop. Its website now counts 101 producer members, and in October 2025 the association announced it had begun the process of setting up a consorzio of its own.
How Cremosina is made
The estate's technical sheet is straightforward. The grapes are picked in the last ten days of September or the first ten days of October. They ferment on their skins in temperature-controlled steel tanks, with repeated pumping over and aeration, until all the sugar has turned to alcohol. The young wine is then drawn off and left on its fine lees for the malolactic fermentation. It spends at least 12 months in oak casks and six in bottle before release, and Bersano gives its alcohol as 14.5 percent on average.
In the producers' association listing, Bersano adds that the vines are Guyot-trained and pruned to seven or eight buds, with bunches thinned after veraison and picked by hand into crates. The estate describes the wine as intense ruby with violet tints, with blackberry and ripe red fruit, spice and balsamic notes on the nose, and calls it full and persistent. It suggests serving it at 16 to 18°C with substantial first courses, red meats and medium to long-aged cheeses, and gives it more than ten years of ageing potential. Besides the standard bottle it comes in magnum and in a three-litre size.
The rest of the Barbera family
Cremosina sits in the middle of a broader Barbera range. Above it is Generala Riserva, a Nizza Riserva from Cascina Generala in Agliano Terme, which Bersano bought in 1995 and which has 53 hectares of vines. It is picked later, in the first or second ten days of October, and aged for at least 12 months in wood, 80 percent of it in tonneaux and 20 percent in larger casks, then 12 months in bottle. A step below sits Costalunga, a Barbera d'Asti Superiore from vineyards in several villages between Agliano Terme, Nizza and Mombaruzzo, aged at least six months in oak.
The other Nizza wines on this year's Tre Bicchieri list are Michele Chiarlo's Montemareto 2023 and the San Luigi 2022 from Aresca, so a three-bottle comparison is possible for anyone curious about how different Nizza can be. Our Tre Bicchieri round-up has the full Piemonte list.
Tasting it where it is made
Bersano's headquarters are at Piazza Dante 21 in Nizza Monferrato. The Monferrato Experience starts in the estate's enoteca, continues through the historic cellars and the Musei Bersano, and ends with a tasting of the wines. It runs Tuesday to Saturday from 9.00 to 13.00 and 14.00 to 18.00, and on Sundays by booking.
The museums alone justify the stop. Arturo Bersano planned the Museo delle Contadinerie in 1950 and opened it in 1961; it holds the tools of country life, including great screw presses from the 1600s, and the estate says it was listed among the protected assets when Langhe-Roero and Monferrato became a UNESCO World Heritage site. The collection of wine prints, opened in 1970 in the family's former Liberty-style house, gathers more than four centuries of prints, drawings and rare books about wine. The estate's timeline also marks 1964, when the Confraternita della Bagna Cauda was born, one of the first societies devoted to Piemonte's food and wine, with members including Umberto Eco and Giorgio Bocca. That makes November's Bagna Cauda Day a fitting time for a bottle of Nizza.
Sources
- https://vinodabere.it/gambero-rosso-i-tre-bicchieri-2027-del-piemonte/ (16 Oct 2026)
- https://www.bersano.it/it/vini/cremosina
- https://www.bersano.it/it/vini/generala
- https://www.bersano.it/it/vigneti-cascine
- https://www.bersano.it/it/about
- https://www.bersano.it/it/musei-bersano
- https://www.bersano.it/it/monferrato-experience
- https://ilnizza.net/en/producers/bersano
- https://ilnizza.net/public/file/press/-20251006113314-PRESSKIT2025.pdf (Oct 2025)
- https://ilnizza.net/