La Stoppa

La Stoppa is a long-established winery, founded over a century ago. Located in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, its vineyards stretch along the Trebbiola Valley, not far from the Trebbia River in the province of Piacenza.

The idea of locality is a particular aspect of La Stoppa's work.

Elena Pantaleoni, who previously ran a bookstore in nearby Piacenza, inherited the winery from her father in the early 1990s, and from then on continued to write the history of the traditional winery. It all started with the legendary lawyer Ageno who, with his money and ambitions, successfully pursued the goal of making wines of the Emilia Romagna region known. After Phylloxera, the wine stock was in bad shape and he planted new vineyards with the grape varieties that promised prestige at that time, which were French grape varieties from Burgundy and Bordeaux. The local grapes were rather seen as good simple table wine for the region, only Barolo already had an international status, today the attention is fortunately already distributed a little more democratically. Elena's father shared this fascination for French wines and a " Pinot de la Stoppa " was not uncommon.

Elena sees it from a different perspective. Even though she tried to get the best out of foreign grapes, the quality did not equal the ideal, the climate, the soil, it just wasn't right. She gradually abandoned the international grape varieties and, together with Giulio Armani, gradually planted more of the autochthonous grape varieties, such as Malvasia, Trebbiano, Barbera and Bornardo. Thus, they were at the forefront of a new movement, and more and more vintners of the region invested in the local grape varieties. They were keen to reflect the world of their roots with their wines.

Elena is aware of the privilege of being in the business for a long time and she uses this to bring the wines to the market exactly when harmony is established in the bottle. This requires a great deal of discipline and organization towards storage, production and liquidity. She does not follow trends and the term natural wine is not a purpose for her, even though her wines conform to its principles. She does not want to see her work captured in a term. She makes wine that does justice to her ideas, without compromise.