Fattoria Paradiso

A Barbarossa kept in the family line

Graziella Pezzi works Barbarossa by name and by memory as winemaker at Fattoria Paradiso in Bertinoro, where the Pezzi family has held the estate since the end of the 19th century. Graziella Pezzi carries owner and manager responsibilities across the property, a range of work that suits a place where cellar, vineyard, kitchen and guest rooms sit inside the same agricultural life. Her education at Collegio della Sacra Famiglia and Università di Urbino reads less as biography than as method: structure first, then expression. The house itself reaches back to 1853, with a manor described as older still, at least 15th century in origin. The more local story begins in 1954, when Mario Pezzi found an unusual vine in an old vineyard marked for removal. The family preserved it, propagated it, and in 1968 the first wine appeared under the Barbarossa name, tied to Bertinoro’s red-bearded imperial legend. Graziella speaks of Barbarossa without ornament: “It is a fresh wine, with a nice roundness and acidity, easy to drink and excellent as an aperitif and with fish.”

Ten crus, old grapes, controlled vessels

The work here is not built around a single postcard slope. Fattoria Paradiso farms a large, multi-parcel holding, with ten distinct crus cited in the estate’s published material and soils that change from volcanic tuff to sulphurous rock, yellow sands, blue clay, marine fossils, limestone and compact clay. Several cru wines are listed at 100–300 meters above sea level, enough variation for the cellar to treat site as a practical tool rather than a romance. Barbarossa remains the fixed point, but the program also keeps Albana Gentile di Bertinoro, Sangiovese, Cagnina, Pagadebit and Chardonnay in view. The documented bottles speak in vineyard names: Albana Cru Vigna dell’Olivo DOCG, Barbarossa Cru Vigna Spungone, Vigna Molino Sangiovese Superiore DOC and Vigna Lepri Sangiovese Riserva Superiore DOC. In the cellar, French and American barriques sit beside steel and cement tanks and large Slavonian oak barrels. A laboratory follows quality at each stage, and controlled conditions guide ripening and aging. The long way here is not rustic refusal. It is selection, vessel and patience held together.

The cellar as a cultural room

The tasting path moves through vineyard, park, production cellar and aging cellar, so the guest does not meet the wine only in the glass. The estate spreads across hillside, parkland and terraces near Bertinoro, with views running toward the Adriatic Sea; the room around the work is historical without being sealed off from use. A wine museum sits alongside a vintage car and motorcycle collection, and that pairing says something about the property’s habit of keeping memory visible. The cellar experience is conversational rather than theatrical. Barrels, tanks, named crus and family objects all share the same estate grammar, and Graziella’s Barbarossa sits at the center of it, presented at Vinitaly through Vigna del Dosso, Cuvèe Mario Pezzi and Barbarossa rosé.

Why the preservation matters

Fattoria Paradiso matters most where the agricultural act becomes a cultural one. Mario Pezzi did not treat the unknown vine as a curiosity to be cleared from the row; he kept it, had it studied, and gave it a name the estate could work under. Later, the family also revived Pagadebit and Cagnina in 1960, extending the same instinct to other Romagna grapes. For Graziella, the next measure is the bottle that keeps those names legible without excess. At this estate, the concrete noun is still Barbarossa.