story…

Officially established in the 1980’s, however the Prà family has been farming & cultivating their vineyards in the Soave region for generations before their first commercial bottlings came onto the market. The commercialization & success of the Prà winery begins with Graziano Prà. Graziano, who group up surrounded by the family vineyards in the heart of the Soave, made the decision in the early 80’s to dedicate his life to the family estate. Establishing the production & sales of their wine under the family name. It did not take long for the world to take notice of the dedication & passion Graziano was pouring into the estate & his subsequent wines. He & the winery soon become well respected in the greater wine community, being awarded a multitude of awards from both Italian & international agencies.

Today Graziano’s dedication to the family estate hasn’t changed a bit. Not one to sit back and let things just happen he is always tinkering & evolving his practices to produce higher quality wines. His focus has always been on the traditional, local varieties of the region, this primarily consists of Garganega, however in the last few decades he has always been working with the less common Trebbiano di Soave (Verdicchio). He believes this addition of Trebbiano di Soave, currently only used in his top bottling, Monte Grande, lends a sense of minerality & freshness giving the overall wine more complexity.

Although Graziano’s family has a long tradition in Soave & his white wines are what put him on the map, he has also ventured into red wines of the surrounding region. After several years hunting for the right location, he purchased a 8 hectare vineyard site, La Morandina, on the high elevation slopes of the Mezzane Valley in Valpolicella in 2001. The vineyard lies on a rather atypical soil combination for the area with large portions of calcareous glacial soils along with limestone and a topsoil heavy in marl fossils. This combination of high elevation & limestone heavy soils gives his red wines a greater sense of freshness than most would associate with Valpolicella reds. From this site he now produces three distinct bottlings of the classic wines of the region; Valpolicella, Valpolicella Ripasso, & Amarone della Valpolicella.

philosophy…

Graziano is a man of the land & vines, giving nearly all his focus on his wines through the way the vines are cultivated and the land is treated. From the onset his Soave vineyards have been farmed organically and he began the conversion to organics immediately following the purchase of his Valpolicella vineyard. All of his vineyards are now certified organic. The fruit is all hand harvested in all of his vineyards & he only produces wine from his estate holdings, there is no purchased fruit used at the winery. For his Monte Grande bottling he employs a rather unique technique in the vineyards where the Garganega bunches destined for that wine have their shoots cut & are left to dry in the vineyard for a month prior to pressing. This, as you’d expect, increases the intensity & richness of the fruit without concern of it over ripening on the vine.

In the cellar his work is quite straightforward & in many ways typical of what one would expect. Most of the whites only see stainless steel tanks for fermentation & aging. Only the top bottlings are aged in a oak, mostly in large Allier botti barrels. The reds all see oak to varying degrees which include tonneaux & barrique depending on the cuvée along with the more traditional botti. All of the red wines have their fruit air dried prior to being pressed & fermented, primarily the Corvina & the drying can last as little as a few weeks or as long as 2 months. Only native yeasts are implemented in the winery for all fermentations of the wines.

Vineyards…

The heart of the Prà estate lies in the Soave region, primarily in the Monteforte d’Alpone area of Soave near the family winery. The estate vineyards in Soave amount to 30 ha of vines including two distinctive single site holdings of: Monte Grande which lies within the Classico borders & Monte Bisson which lies just west of the town of Soave and just outside of the Classico borders but within the DOC borders. A vast majority of their Soave vineyards are planted to Garganega, in fact it is only in their Monte Grande vineyard that they have anything but Garganega planted, their they have about 30% of the vineyard planted to Trebbiano di Soave.

In Valpolicella they own a single site consisting of 7 ha of vines planted at high elevation within the Valpolicella DOC borders. The vineyard is planted to the four main red varieties of the region; Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella, & Oseleta.

• Monte Grande

  part of the original vineyards owned by the Prà family & where Graziano got his start producing wine under the family name | planted in volcanic soils at 150 masl with a south facing exposure | vines average 40 years of age | planted to roughly 2/3 Garganega & 1/3 to Trebbiano di Soave planted with Pergola Veronese training

• Monte Bisson

  a more recent addition to the Prà holdings in Soave | planted in volcanic soils at 150 masl with a south/southeast facing exposure | vines average between 30-60 years of age | 100% Garganega planted with Pergola Veronese training

• La Morandina

  the only holdings of the Prà family in Valpolicella | planted in glacial white soils of chalky rock, ancient clay, limestone, & marine sand at 450 masl on a slope with southeast exposure | vineyard was planted in 2001 | a traditional mix of Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella & Oseleta planted with Guyot training

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