Hello to everybody!

I hope you are all doing well.

After a rainy autumn, winter temperatures have arrived and the weather forecast says that it will snow on Wednesday.

The day before botting, exactly as it did last year. So we are planning how to shovel snow in time to let the bottling machine arrive in the cellar.

Maybe it will have to arrive by sleigh like Santa Claus!

Cellar has been uppermost in our thoughts of the last months (but we have also had some satisfaction coming from the vineyards covered by sprouted field bean, pic1)

We have removed skins from the wines, joined tanks, labelled bottles with grapes boxes drying after the end-of-harvest washing, occupying half of the cellar.

Then we had to move back the second lot of Rosso 2020 and Barbera Superiore 2019 (pic 2, sorry but Michele couldn't smile on that day!) from the small cellar in the city to the "big" one for the new bottling, after less than 3 months...

We don't want to do all this useless, tiring, endless "moving things" anymore, we are both older than forty (!!) now. Before the next harvest we will definitely have to enlarge the cellar by using the courtyard which is just in front of the entrance.

A grant would help, but if we won't receive any, in the first year we will only do the floor.

A real step by step operation, as usual.

We haven't had the thrill of spending a lot of money for about 3 years now, and maybe we could get too relaxed, so let's start again!

The very happy thing is that you are all still there and that we can even meet now (pic3, from Mercato dei Vini a Piacenza, which year after year is becoming a real international wine fair)! We will not attend Vinitaly in 2022 for several reasons, but I hope there will be many other opportunities to meet.

We will be here, for instance: https://slowinefair.slowfood.it/en/

The rest of the time, you'll find us in Paderna.

Cheers,
Chiara and Michele

Hello dear friends of Oltretorrente,

Harvest 2021 is finished (pic1,2).

Vintage was similar to 2020: it rained and snowed during winter so that there was some water storage at the beginning of spring. Then it didn't rain anymore with hot summer temperatures.

We started the vegetative season with a huge quantity of bunches on the vines, we even had to do some green harvesting on timorasso but then we lost so much yield on barbera due to heat/drought and to a hail storm in July, that the final grapes quantity was the same as in 2020. Healthy fruit, full of intensity.

Fermentations are almost finished too: green manure for several years on all the vineyards is giving more nutrition to yeasts, they are definitely more fit! Hop hop hop!

Today we are starting the new field bean sowing so we have to motivate ourselves (pic 3)!

A very welcome incentive has arrived during harvest: the Slowine guide of 2022 has awarded us with a special prize that is given to wineries that represent the Slowfood values (Chiocciola) and with the recognition of Top Wine to Timorasso 2019. The Slowine guide is the only wine guide we are still sending bottles to, so we are very proud to have received the winery prize that to us was the most valuable.

In the meantime some of the vintages that are on sale have changed: Rosso and Timorasso are now 2020.

I really hope you'll find some time to come to Paderna and taste our wines together,

we miss you!!

Chiara and Michele

Hello everybody,

The holidays were fine, but we had to come back home to be ready for harvest. Many wild animals are helping us to be faster this year (Esopo was not wrong...You too!! Pic1), maybe we should just find a way to give them water and save grapes...

It was a very dry summer, so roe deers, wild boars (and foxes?!) are eating more grapes than usual to rehydrate. But that's not the worst grape damage we had (not yet): there was a hailstorm in late-July and a very hot week in August. The result of these climatic factors in some vineyards (especially barbera suffers a lot from high temperatures) would be a depressing picture, so I'll send you a funnier and interesting one about timorasso instead (Pic2).

If you look carefully into it, you'll notice that the vine on the left has not a single bunch, while the vine on the right has probably produced 15 kg of grapes (but obviously we had to cut off much of it). What a crazy, unpredictable variety it is!

Next Thursday, on our daughter Carlotta's birthday, we'll start picking up some barbera, then we'll stop for a birthday party and then there will probably be no rest: grape samples and damage evolution will guide us through the harvest map.

Let's get ready, then! (Pic3) Maybe cellophane should go on the camping van now...

Timorasso 2019 is sold out, let's talk about Timorasso 2020 then!

Thanks a lot for all your support,

ciao

Chiara and Michele