Pieropan
Soave Classico La Rocca
Soave Classico
2020

The producer

The Pieropan estate dates back to 1966, when Leonildo Pieropan, after finishing his oenology and viticulture studies, acquired vineyards in the Soave Classico area.  Leonildo wanted to enhance the expression of the area’s best vineyards and thus created the Vigneto Calvarino in 1972 – Italy’s first single vineyard white wine – and late in 1978, Vigneto La Rocca. In 2008, Leonildo started converting all the estate’s farming to organics. Leonildo’s sons, Andrea and Dario, are leading the Pieropan estate today, continuing what their father started. Pieropan is consistently amongst the finest producers in the Soave area.

The wine

First created with the 1978 vintage, Vigneto La Rocca is one of Italy’s first single vineyard white wines. Fruit is derived from prime hillside vineyards in Soave Classico, from vines up to 50 years’ old and growing in soil rich in limestone of marine origin at around 150 metres above sea level. The wine ferments in big oak barrels and is following matured for around 15 months.  La Rocca is a wine of intense exotic fruit, spice, and nutty aromatics with a refreshing and savoury texture, medium body, and persistent finish.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.