The Production

With a keen passion for champagne, on the Piacentino hills where there’s an antique bottled fermentation tradition, Graziano Terzoni produces 30,000 bottles of sparkling wine a year of which 20,000 are classic method spumante.

Lady Giò and Les Rois are two lines which express Terzoni’s production vision and demonstrate his capacity to achieve from excellent indigenous grapes and from Pinot Noir, classic method wines which can compete with the best sparkling wines from anywhere. Badessa (sparkling Malvasia), Aquapazza (Malvasia), Terre di Bigarola (Ortrugo) and the sweet Ipergea (Malvasia) represent the local area and the DOCs in their purity.

“An oenologist is like a tailor: having viewed the material he takes a needle and thread to create a new outfit which has to be liked by who admires it. The magic word is elegance. I do my very best to create elegant wines in which one sip leads to another. In the grapes, I look for the refined tannins, the delicate perfumes, the harmonious flavours and aftertastes. Even at the expense of strength and power, which a tailor would cover with his best fabrics.

An elegant “nose” goes hand in hand with an elegant “palate”, whereas strong smells nearly always coincide with an excessive flavour which lacks harmony. An exaggeration isn’t always a negative thing, but my ideal scenario is when two old friends meet up, open a bottle of wine and catch up. After half an hour the bottle is empty! This is my aim.”