Festa del Ruchè
A weekend given over to Ruchè di Castagnole Monferrato DOCG — the aromatic red poured by its own growers in the frescoed halls of a 17th-century estate, in the village where the grape comes home.
Why it's special
Where else do you taste twenty makers of one small DOCG side by side, in the rooms of Tenuta La Mercantile, with the producers themselves pouring? This is the yearly gathering of the whole Ruchè denomination in one courtyard.
Programme · 2026
At Tenuta La Mercantile, a late-17th-century estate with frescoed halls and an Italian garden, organised by the Consorzio Barbera d'Asti e Vini del Monferrato with Go Wine. Around twenty Ruchè producers pour their own bottles.
- Entry to the estate grounds is free; you pay for the tasting (around €25, or €20 with an AIS/FISAR/Go Wine/ONAV card, and cheaper booked online).
- The ticket comes with a glass you carry from table to table.
- Come Saturday if you want the evening — that's when the music plays and the courtyard fills.
Ruchè almost didn't make it. A parish priest, Don Giacomo Cauda, replanted the abandoned rows behind the church of Castagnole Monferrato in the 1960s and pulled the grape back from the edge. Now it's a DOCG grown in just seven comuni, and once a year the people who make it bring their bottles to one place.
That place is Tenuta La Mercantile, a late-1600s estate on the hill, its rooms still painted floor to ceiling. You buy a ticket, you're handed a glass, and you work the tables — roughly twenty growers, each pouring their own Ruchè, so you taste the same grape argued twenty different ways. Rose and black pepper on the nose, most of them; then the differences start. The producers are right there to explain them.
It runs across a Saturday and Sunday in mid-May, in timed sittings so the halls don't turn into a scrum. Food stands cover lunch, and Saturday night the courtyard gets music. Entry to the grounds costs nothing; you only pay if you're tasting, which of course you are.
For the year-round story of the wine, the Museo del Ruchè di Casa Ferraris in the village is worth an hour. And in August the growers do it again at night — see Notte di Stelle e Ruché.