La Stoppa Vino del Volta, is made of 100% Malvasia di Candia Aromatica grown on clay silt. The name Vino del Volta is the name of the vineyard, which takes its name from Signor Volta, the sharecropper who has cultivated it for years.
The grapes are dried in the sun before gentle pressing, the wine is aged in old barrels and spent some time in bottle before release. It is a medium bodied, medium sweet wine with wonderful subtle aromas of apricot, peach skin and white flower.
LA STOPPA, Elena Pantaleoni, Rivergaro Certified organic, natural
La Stoppa is a 58 hectare property (30 planted to vines) located in the Colli Piacentini in north-west Emilia-Romagna. Founded in the late 19th century by a wealthy lawyer named Giancarlo Ageno, the estate was bought by Elena Pantaleoni’s father in 1973. At the time, the estate focused on producing international style wines. Elena inherited the estate in 1991 and by 1996, she and head vignaiolo Giulio Armani began to execute the vision they had for the future of the estate. They replanted 32 hectares of Barbera and Bornada, as well as a small amount of Malvasia Candia, Ortrugo and Trebianno, all of which were much more suited to the hot climate (it can be hotter than Sicily during the summer) and heavy clay soils of the Colli Piacentini.
The vines were worked organically from the early 90s and La Stoppa received organic certification in 2008. Elena, in typical humble fashion, describes herself as ‘la custode de la vigne’, merely a guardian, until she in her turn passes the estate to the next generation. Her low-key, but powerful conviction is that her responsibility is to farm and make wine in as sustainable, non-interventionist and authentic a way as possible. The wines qualify for Colli Piacentini DOC, but are bottled as Emilia IGT because she feels that the rules of the DOC do not allow the authenticity of the terroir to speak. Her stances on the necessity of truly artisan (as opposed to industrial) production, the use of indigenous grape varieties, yeasts and minimal intervention in the cantina have made her a leading voice for devotees of natural, artisanal wine. She featured in Jonathon Nossiter’s 2015 documentary ‘Natural Resistance’.