Tucked away in the little known Barbaresco village of San Rocco Seno d'Elvio, just outside Alba, is the single plot of 4 hectares (of Nebbiolo, Barbera & Dolcetto) that belongs to Manuel Marinacci. A graduate of Alba's viticultural school, Umberto 1, where he was a classmate of Giuseppe Mascarello. Upon graduation Manuel worked abroad & locally for both large and small wineries before taking on the lease of the San Rocco Seno d'Elvio vineyard in 2002.

Refreshingly Manuel immediately adopted the traditional approach to winemaking—like his famous classmate. His Barbaresco is vinified in cement without temperature control using selected yeast. The Barbaresco is then aged in large slavonian botte for two years. Importantly he only vinifies that that is going into bottle with his name on it (rather than making wine out of all the crop and selling off any surplus as bulk wine); the rest is sold as fruit.

The vineyards—just as the winemaking in the cellar—is carried out by Manuel himself, one colleague, and Giove, his ever-present pup. The vineyards are converting to organic and already eschew the use of herbicide and pesticide. In the cellar he is careful and purposeful allowing for low SO2 throughout élevage and at bottling. The current production of Barbaresco is at about 500 cases per annum. The style of Manuel's wines are grounded in tradition yet clean, bright and eminently drinkable.