This estate was founded in the 1960s by Rinaldo Rinaldini, who owned a famous local restaurant using locally prepared meats and specialities, and wanted proper wines to accompany his dishes. It is now run by Rinaldo's daughter Paola, her husband Mark and their son Luke, who tends the vines.
The estate uses cellars converted from an 1884 farmhouse, which had once been used to raise cows for the production of parmesan, and is based in the Emilia-Romagna region in central-northern Italy, between Emilia and Parma. The farmhouse is now surrounded by the family's 15 hectares of high-density, low-yielding, cordon-trained vines, which are all of a high quality, and planted on alluvial, gravel soils.
In these cellars, Paola and the team produce a range of red, white and rosé wines, but they are perhaps best known from their top-quality sparkling lambrusco - some of the best made in the region - which they make using the Champagne method. They still perform the riddling process (turning the bottles by hand to settle the sediment - a process widely abandoned in Champagne due to high labour costs).