Tucked into the hills of Monteveglio between Bologna and Modena, Gradizzolo is a farm where wine, food, and memory are inseparable, and where grapes most growers abandoned long ago still ripen on old vines.
Backstory
The Ognibene family has tended the Gradizzolo vines in the Colli Bolognesi since the early twentieth century. In 1973 Antonio Ognibene took over from his father and steered the estate toward respect for tradition and the land. Today Antonio works the vineyards and cellar alongside his son Gianluca, while his wife Marisa and daughter Chiara run a farmhouse kitchen serving classic Bolognese cooking. The agriturismo opened in 2008.
Vineyards and Farming
Gradizzolo farms roughly 7 hectares biodynamically, on clay and limestone soils at around 260 meters of elevation, with some vines well over a hundred years old. The family deliberately kept nearly forgotten local varieties such as Negrettino and Alionza, alongside Pignoletto (Grechetto Gentile) and Barbera. Work in the vineyard is manual and non-invasive, and the estate also keeps olive trees, fruit trees, and a vegetable garden.
Winemaking
Gradizzolo fermentations are spontaneous, driven only by indigenous yeasts. Wines rest in stainless steel, concrete, wooden barrels, and terracotta amphorae lined with beeswax, with some macerated on the skins for around three months in amphora. Oenological additives and processing aids are excluded, the wines are unfiltered, and re-fermentations happen naturally in the bottle following the ancestral method.
The Wines
The Gradizzolo range centers on the Colli Bolognesi: a Pignoletto called Bersot, the skin-contact Le Anfore aged a year in amphora, and Barbera from the Bricco dell'Invernata, among ancestral-method sparklers.
