Why it matters
The producer
Three siblings bought an old Lombard estate in 2019 and planted themselves in a grape their family had never commercially farmed. Francesco, Lorenzo and Caterina Cordero grew up inside one of the Langhe's most connected wine families: their father Mario spent more than thirty years running a prominent Barolo-country winery, and their maternal grandparents were Luciana Vietti and Alfredo Currado, the couple who built Vietti into a Barolo reference. That inheritance gave them wine knowledge, cellar instinct and a family name that meant something in Piedmont. It did not give them a vineyard.
Mario Cordero built his career in the Langhe through the 1980s and 1990s, a period when Barolo was redefining itself and the most contested decisions in Italian wine were being fought out in Piedmont cellars. His children grew up watching that world from close range. Francesco, Lorenzo and Caterina each went further afield: they trained in wineries in France, the United States and New Zealand, working different approaches to viticulture and cellar practice before any of them had a home estate to apply those ideas to.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Oltrepò Pavese sits in the southernmost corner of Lombardy, in the Apennine foothills south of the Po river. The name means simply "beyond the Po on the Pavia side": a rolling landscape of vineyards, woodland and clay-rich slopes that belongs geographically to the same hill system as northern Emilia. Santa Giuletta, where the estate sits, is at 230 metres, high enough to give the vines a meaningful day-to-night temperature swing through the growing season. That shift slows ripening and preserves acidity in the fruit.
The estate has preserved a centuries-old oak and cherry forest on part of its land. The woodland supports insect biodiversity and moderates the local microclimate around the vineyard edges.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Each parcel is vinified separately from harvest through ageing. Parcels differ in vine age, row orientation and the degree of clay or calcareous material underfoot, so keeping them apart allows the cellar to track what each contributes before the decision to blend or bottle individually is made. Massal selection from the existing old vines supplies propagation material, which keeps the genetic diversity of those 35-year-old plantings intact rather than replacing them with a single approved clone.
Fertilisation is done with organic cow manure only. No synthetic treatments are used in the vineyard. The preserved forest on the estate functions as a biodiversity corridor alongside the vines.
Wines to know
The range in view
Rivone is a single-variety Chardonnay bottled as Oltrepò Pavese DOC. The wine takes its name from a steep vineyard parcel that supplies the fruit: working that slope by hand at harvest is demanding, and the name anchors the bottle to the labour the site requires. After twelve months on lees in amphorae and barriques with regular stirring, and a further six months in bottle, the wine is textured and aromatic, with the weight that extended lees contact builds and an acid line that the altitude and calcareous soil contribute. It is capable of development in bottle.
Partù is the estate Pinot Nero at the Pavia IGT level, drawn from multiple parcels with vines of different ages and exposures rather than a single site. The multi-parcel approach blends older-vine depth with the freshness that younger parcels and higher-altitude rows can supply. Wine Enthusiast reviewed the 2020 vintage and found ripe red fruit, earthy character and firm tannin; the producer describes smooth tannins and a long finish. Tannin character varies with vintage, so both readings are honest depending on the year.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Partù. It is a Pinot Nero from Oltrepò Pavese, drawn from multiple parcels across the estate's old vines, barrel-aged and bottled without complication. Red berry fruit, an earthy mid-palate, and firm acidity from the Santa Giuletta hill: those three things together give a clear picture of what this zone and this estate produce. It is less expensive than Tiamat, widely available through Scandinavian and Italian markets, and direct enough that a first bottle becomes a reference point rather than a puzzle.