Hi, I am Stefano Parpaiola, a passionate winemaker from Oltrepò Pavese. My dream was to become a winemaker and fifteen years ago, I started this fantastic adventure carried by passion. Sure, I had to face many obstacles starting from scratch, but I have overcome them with work, study, will and humility. Every year, I dare more and more, as with the limited-edition CL, that is a sparkling wine refined on yeasts for over 150 months. For me, wine is an expression of human genius, which has transformed a fruit into a pure but complex pleasure of the senses. Cantina PrimaVena wines will appetize you for the purity, given by genuineness and frankness; and for the complexity conferred by elegance and uniqueness. Cantina PrimaVena is not winemakers’ leaders, it is a small winery that day after day gives its best to make known the good of Italy in the world.
The roots of Cantina PrimaVena are in Oltrepò Pavese, because in this corner of Lombardy everything is about wine, starting from the shape. Infact, the Oltrepò Pavese has the triangular shape like a bunch of grapes, moreover it is crossed by the 45th parallel north defined the “parallel of wine”. Precisely, the 45th parallel “is a watershed between too cold in the North and too hot in the South”, because it is equidistant from the North Pole and the Equator. This area is particularly suitable to produce great wines, as Bernard and Dussard explain in the book “La Magie du 45e Parallèle: Latitude Idéale des Grands Vins du Monde”. Moreover, the lay of the land and the microclimate characterized by a strong thermal excursion between night and day make Oltrepò Pavese an ideal habitat to produce quality grapes. Finally, the Apennines’ natural shield preserves the grapes from the dreaded frosts and environmental adversity.
For Cantina PrimaVena a genuinely good wine must be born from a healthy ecosystem. Therefore, in the vineyard we do not use plant protection products of harmful class and the soil is left covered with grass, to create a harmony between nature and man’s work. Indeed, the grassing makes a natural balance in the vineyard between microorganisms and insects of the soil, it also maintains organic substances and protects the soil from erosion. Thus, we have depicted, with the image of the homepage, the ideal environment where to give birth to a good wine and summarized with the motto: “Honest with the Earth today to harvest well tomorrow”. We have represented many living species, from the largest to the smallest, because they all play an essential role in keeping the ecosystem in balance and they need to be protected for safeguarding collective well-being.
At the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) 2022, the most highly regarded and prestigious wine competition in the world, all four of our wines in the competition were honoured, and in particular placed Cantina PrimaVena and our CL in 35th place in the world, among sparkling wines, out of almost 20,000 bottles examined from over 57 countries in the running.
The award-winning wines are:
- CL: Gold Medal
- Dumà Vin: Silver medal
- Bibo: Bronze Medal
- Reverso: Bronze Medal
Information about Cantina PrimaVena