Cascina degli Ulivi is a biodynamic farm located on the hills of Novi Ligure in the province of Alessandria. He is best known for his wines, but the project has a wider scope. We have a varied agricultural production, breeding, and an agritourism where it is possible to buy our products, have lunch and dinner with food and wines from the company's production and stay in the Piedmont countryside. Cascina degli Ulivi has belonged to the Bellotti family since 1930: Stefano decided to live here in contact with the earth, in the silence and extraordinary beauty of this countryside. “I began to get involved in agriculture in 1977, at the age of 18, taking over the small family business where no more than one hectare of vineyard remained and – with the help and teaching of an elderly neighbor, illiterate but passionate and competent , Pietro Toccalino – I started making wine 'without oenology'”. “Even though I come from a Genoese family, I'm in Acqui Terme, which was a totally agricultural town in the sixties. I would leave the house and my mother would send me to get milk in a farmhouse which today is completely in the city. He was just outside the house then. My father was a doctor and had a passion, however, for the countryside. He took advantage of being hired by the hospital in Acqui and the first thing he did was to get a garden to cultivate. When he came out of the hospital he spent his time there, in the countryside and talking to each other or on a bicycle. Where the countryside used to be, now there are supermarkets and shopping centres.” “In the past, Acqui was surrounded by vineyards. In the first century after Christ, the Romans took the wine here. I remember as a child and a teenager – it was the era of property developers and building speculation – every time an excavator came to put down a bucket, they jumped out first from all sides in Acqui. But a hundred. And we children went by bicycle to see the show. They brought out amphorae everywhere. The city was a very flourishing Roman city. Wine in Monferrato was everywhere, it was part of the daily experience. I remember that it was bottled at home because they brought the wine in carboys. It was a ritual that my mother tended to take care of and that fascinated me a lot. I gave her a hand and the scent of the wine intoxicated me. I always asked to taste it. My father always gave me a drop. That scent was fascinating. As for the harvests, I started later. The Cascina degli Ulivi had already become my family's property and we used to come here in the summer. I began to actively participate in the grape harvest in 1969, when I was 11 years old. We went to the "navazza" barefoot, even if we already used the roller crusher which was also a destemmer." “My first harvest, exclusively mine, always with the help of Pietro Toccalino, but managed by me and which had become my thing, I then did in 1975. I was 17 at the time. This year there are forty one harvests of my life. At the time we had a hectare of vineyard, with Barbera, Dolcetto which we vinified separately, and a little Cortese. The first few years, as they had frightened me by telling me that making white wine was too difficult, I sold the white berried grapes and only made the red. Later I also did the white.”