When Graziano Pra began bottling his family's estate wines commercially in 1983, Soave was considered a source of cheap, characterless white wine. He has spent forty years proving that assessment wrong. Today, Vini Graziano Pra is recognized as one of the most important estates in Italian white wine, a boutique winery in the Soave Classico zone producing Garganega-based wines of mineral depth and structural honesty that can evolve in bottle for ten to twenty years.
Organic from the Beginning
Graziano adopted certified organic viticulture from the estate's founding, a commercially unconventional choice in 1983 that now looks prescient. The vineyards in Monteforte d'Alpone sit on volcanic basalt soils that give the wines their signature mineral tension. In the cellar, fermentation is driven entirely by indigenous yeasts. Wines age in stainless steel or large neutral oak botti only, with no new French barriques and no additions beyond minimal sulfur. The wines are unfined and unfiltered.
The Soave Classico Zone
Monteforte d'Alpone sits at the heart of the historic Soave Classico zone, where the original volcanic hillside vineyards were planted centuries before the appellation expanded into the flat plains of the DOC. Graziano is one of a small group of producers who have consistently argued that Soave's potential for complexity and longevity resides exclusively in these old hillside sites. His work with Garganega, the primary grape of Soave, demonstrates the variety's capacity for aged, mineral-driven whites when the farming is right and the intervention is minimal.
Valpolicella, Collaboration, and Influence
Beyond Soave, Graziano Pra produces wines from Valpolicella, extending his organic, low-intervention philosophy across the Veneto's two most important red and white wine regions. He is a member of Gli Svitati, a group of five Italian vintners who were among the first in Italy to adopt screw caps for premium wines. A winemaker of genuine influence, Graziano Pra has done more than almost anyone to demonstrate that Veneto's native grapes, farmed organically and handled with restraint, are world-class.
