(Decanter) - People went 'crazy' when news broke that a US family had bought the historic Vietti winery in Barolo country. Jane Anson visited Piedmont to test the local sentiment and get the inside track on the sale...

The arrival of The Americans was pretty much the sole subject of conversation in Piedmont when I was there in October 2015.

Then just as things died down, the same Americans picked up another piece of prized Piedmontese land a few weeks before I arrived back there this summer. The Vietti sale started up the gossip machine all over again.

It turns out, as is so often the case in this tiniest of worlds, that one in a roundabout fashion led to the other. Head back to last year’s harvest, and the first purchase made by the Krause family. Owners of Kum & Go supermarket chain that counts 400 stores across eleven states of mainly Midwest America, Kyle Krause was the surprise buyer of Enrico Serafino, a 19th century firm owned by the Campari Group based in the Roero. It was a firm that was making a range of wines from sparkling Asti to nebbiolos of Barolo and Barbaresco but had lost some of its glamour over recent decades, and perhaps – or so the local reaction went at the time – there was a certain logic to its going to a big retail group.

Not so with this year’s purchase. In buying Vietti winery, Krause has truly got a local treasure. Set on the stunning slopes of Castiglione Faletto, Vietti is a winery that dates back to the mid 19th century and that was under the ownership of the fifth generation of the Currado family. It makes highly prestigious single vineyard wines from over 25 MGAs (the equivalent of Burgundy climats) across 90 acres of Barolo and Barbaresco, and the outrage that met news of the purchase gives you some idea of how highly this place is regarded.