Bersano (business)

Born in 1907 as a family wine cellar by Giuseppe Bersano, a butcher with the passion of wine that then sells in the area. In 1912^[2] the first acquisition: Cantina Cremonina, 12 hectares in the heart of the Barbera d'Asti area. In 1935^[2] Arturo Bersano, a graduate of law in order to please the family, intellectual with great insights and soon became a pioneer in winemaking sector until it became one of the most important of the company Province of Asti ^[3] before and the Piemonte later with a series of acquisitions of vines. His motto was: "If you want to drink well, buy yourself a vineyard."^[1]

Arturo Bersano promotes various initiatives to enhance the product. In 1961, the Museum of Farmers was founded dedicated to the tools of peasant life. In 1964 he created the Brotherhood of Bagna Cauda, one of the first associations that protects food and Piedmontese wines. And already in the fifty-sixties, it also has the intuition of "dressing" the bottle with labels and high quality packaging. The artist who has allowed him to realize all this is the painter and an Alexandrian graphic Franco Sassi. The Municipality of Alessandria has, in recent years, created an exhibition "The trade marks of Franco Sassi". Many of his creations are preserved both in the Cabinet of the prints of the Alexandrian Civic Art Gallery and at the Bertarelli Collection in Milan. Besides Nizza Monferrato, in the Bersano Museum itself.

Always in the sixties Bersano, who in the meantime keeps epistolary contacts with various writers including Guido Ceronetti,^[4] acquires vineyards in Langa, in the area of Barolo (in 1968 he notes Cascina Badarina Serralunga d'Alba, becoming one of the first producers to give impetus to the success of Barolo) and Barbaresco, in pre-Apennine areas of the Gavi. In the early seventies Bersano, in poor health, sold the company to Seagram, the Canadian group based in Montreal which at that time was the largest distillation company in the world. About ten years later, in 1985, Bersano returned to Italian hands: it was acquired by the Massimelli, Soave, Giovinetti and Riccadonna families.^[5] In 1995 Bersano managed to acquire Riccadonna.^[5]

With the beginning of 2005 Bersano became a wine-making licensor for Italy produced by the historic Tuscan cellars Granducato of the Siena Agrarian Consortium.^[6] Since 2013 the property, over 230 hectares of vineyards, is Massimelli and Soave families. The second generation, Federica Massimelli and Corrado Soave.

• Guido Ceronetti, Two hearts a vineyard. Letters to Arturo Bersano, Padua, The Magic Note, 2007