Why it matters
The producer
Tenuta Mazzolino is a Pinot Nero estate in the Oltrepò Pavese DOC of southern Lombardy, organized from its first serious vintage around a Burgundian conviction: that a single hill on the right bank of the Po, where the flat plain rises into the Apennine foothills, could produce a single-varietal red of genuine depth. The estate's 21 hectares run across 39 separately managed parcels on clay soils. Its flagship, Noir, draws from one named parcel, Regina, and has been vinified in the Burgundian manner since the mid-1980s.
Francesca Seralvo runs the estate today. She is the granddaughter of Enrico Braggiotti, who acquired and developed the property around the turn of the 1980s after identifying what he called the "collina del Pinot Nero," the Pinot Nero hill. Her mother Sandra led the estate between Enrico's generation and Francesca's return in 2015; Francesca formally took over after Enrico's death in 2019. The current team pairs wine grower Stefano Malchiodi with Burgundy-trained oenologist Kyriakos Kynigopoulos, who has shaped the cellar work since 1998.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Oltrepò Pavese sits on the right bank of the Po, south of the river and south of Pavia, where the Lombard plain tilts upward into the northern Apennines. The name means "beyond the Po in Pavia province," and the wines carry the Oltrepò Pavese DOC designation. Tenuta Mazzolino's vineyards sit along the 45th parallel, the same latitude as Burgundy's Côte d'Or, at an altitude where cool nights extend the growing season and preserve the natural acidity that Pinot Nero needs.
The vineyards lie on clay hillsides that run down from the Apennine foothills toward the Po plain. The soil profile is primarily clay, with sandy or arenaceous material and calcareous-gypsum veins.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The 39 parcels are worked as individual units. Each has its own exposure, soil texture, and harvest timing, and the decision to manage them separately rather than as a single estate block allows Mazzolino to select and route fruit precisely.
In the cellar, Noir begins with destemmed whole berries entering steel vessels for a cold soak at 4°C lasting seven to nine days. The cold phase draws aromatic compounds and light tannin from the skins without extracting the harsh phenolics that a warm soak would produce, a technique borrowed directly from the Côte d'Or. Fermentation follows, and the wine moves into 228-liter Remond barriques for ageing. Terrazze, the multi-parcel wine, takes a different route: six months in steel, no oak, preserving the fresher, more immediately aromatic side of the Pinot Nero fruit.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range is built on two Pinot Nero wines and reflects the Burgundian hierarchy the estate has followed from the beginning.
Terrazze is a multi-parcel Pinot Nero drawing from several of the 39 separately managed plots. It ages six months in steel with no oak contact, which keeps the fruit forward, the tannins light, and the colour bright. Red cherry, dried herbs, and a clean mineral edge are typical of the style. It is the estate's wider-address Pinot Nero: approachable at a younger age, less concentrated than Noir, and intended to give access to the hill's character without the deeper extraction and barrel work of the flagship.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Noir is the bottle. It is 100% Pinot Nero from the Regina parcel, cold-soaked at 4°C for up to nine days, then aged in 228-liter Remond barriques. Start with Noir to understand what the Regina parcel produces and what Kynigopoulos does with it.