Why we are called La Granica:
Etymology
Medieval English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin "granica" (villa) 'grain house
or farm', based on Latin granum 'grain'
Noun
grange
1. (British) A farm, especially that of a gentleman farmer
2. Outlying land belonging to a monastery
3. (archaic) A granary
Grange
1. (US) An association of farmers; one of the branch lodges of this association .
La Granica was originally a grain store for the water mill of the village that used to
sit near the house on the river. It was built around the start of the 1700s and is typical of
this style of Monferrato dwelling. The grain store has been redeveloped into the main part of
the hotel and the original house is now the self-catering cottage, however La Granica remains
a working farm sitting in 7 hectares of our own land.
The farm manages meadows and woods filled with poplar, acacia, mulberry and fruit trees and of
course our own vineyards, which are currently being renovated. We are now happy to say we are
well on our way to producing not only high quality grapes but small amounts of good wine which
is part of a phased development to produce wines on a small commercial basis. The renovated
vineyards are classed under the status of ‘eco friendly’. At the end of this program we will
be growing Barbera and Moscato grapes.
We are very lucky to have our own natural spring on the land; all of La Granica’s water supply comes
from this spring. We do have a water treatment and filtering system on site to make sure that the water is pure.
This means we have fantastic high quality mineral water on tap.
Our pool was finished in April 2005; it is a rectangular area of 12 by 5.5 metres and has two depths, the
shallow end being about 1 metre with the deep end sloping to 2 metres. It is a non-chlorinated pool; we use
a system with no adverse chemicals.
The pool is in the field next to the hotel; from there you can walk through the fields or trek up through the
vineyards to the ridge to view the village. You can also walk back towards the house through the vineyards and the wood.
We are also a smoke free environment, which means that we don’t allow smoking in the grounds as well
as inside the hotel or cottage.
