Why it matters
The producer
Petra sits on a coastal hill in Suvereto, a small town in southern Tuscany where the Val di Cornia meets the Maremma plain and the Tyrrhenian Sea is close enough to bend the climate. The estate was founded in 1997 by Vittorio Moretti, who also owns the Franciacorta houses Bellavista and Contadi Castaldi in Lombardy. Petra was a different kind of project: 300 hectares on the Tuscan coast, roughly one hundred of them planted, with a gravity-flow winery commissioned from Swiss architect Mario Botta cut into the hillside.
Francesca Moretti runs the estate today as winemaker and CEO. In 2014 she brought in Beppe Caviola, a winemaker from Piedmont known for wines with freshness and lifted acidity, as an adviser. That collaboration changed how the vineyards are harvested and how the cellar is run, and the effect shows in the wines.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Suvereto is an appellation town in the Val di Cornia DOC zone, on the southern Maremma coast between Livorno and Grosseto. At this latitude and elevation, the Tyrrhenian Sea moderates summer heat and pulls in afternoon breezes that slow ripening and help grapes keep acidity late into the harvest season. Suvereto earned its own DOC in 2011, and the appellation label appears on Petra's Hebo, a red wine built to reflect the immediate coastal hill setting rather than the broader Tuscan IGT category.
The soils shift by altitude. On the hilltops, volcanic tuff and clay hold water and limit vine vigour. Lower sites carry calcareous alluvial material, draining more freely and producing a different fruit weight. Both soil types are planted, and the vertical spread of the estate gives Petra more than one kind of raw material to work with across its three main wines.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The vineyards cover around one hundred hectares across the 300-hectare estate, farmed with an emphasis on sustainability. Attilio Scienza oversees viticulture. The two-pass harvest is the field decision: by returning to each block days after the first pick, the team collects grapes at slightly different ripeness points, which broadens the aromatic complexity and keeps natural acidity higher than a single-pass harvest would allow. Fruit arrives at the cellar with more range.
Inside the cellar, cold maceration before fermentation allows the skins to give up colour and tannin at low temperature, without the extraction that comes once fermentation heat begins. Holding fermentation at or below 27°C keeps primary fruit aromas in the wine. The shift away from heavy new oak use means the wines now show the Suvereto site more directly. The tunnel cellar, running deep into the hillside at natural rock temperature, handles barrel ageing without refrigeration.
Wines to know
The range in view
Petra's range is built around three red wines across two label tiers. The flagship, Petra, is a Toscana IGT red from Bordeaux varieties, aged in French oak barriques. The 2019 vintage shows cassis, dried herbs, and graphite on the nose, with soft rounded tannins and enough mid-palate concentration for medium-term cellaring of five to ten years.
Hebo is the estate's Suvereto Rosso or Val di Cornia DOC red, carrying the local appellation rather than the broader IGT category. The 2021 vintage has ripe dark fruit on the nose, firm but rounded tannins, and a thread of fresh acidity that keeps the finish clean. It is built on the same post-2014 template as the flagship but sits at a lighter, more approachable weight.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with Hebo. It is the Suvereto Rosso or Val di Cornia DOC red from Petra's mid-range, and it carries the estate's post-2014 approach in its most accessible form. The 2021 vintage has ripe dark fruit, polished tannins, and fresh acidity that keeps the wine from feeling heavy. There is enough weight to make the coastal Maremma setting legible, and enough freshness from the two-pass harvest and capped fermentation temperatures to show what changed in 2014. It opens well within two or three years of release and holds for several more.