People behind: ...with great passion & dedication
It requires great passion and dedication for Giorgio Rivetti and his team from La Spinetta to bring this jewel of a winery back to its previous glory. With respect for tradition and history and a love for great Champagne, Giorgio and his team have taken over Italy's oldest metodo classico house. It is the goal of everybody behind this new venture to revive the brand Contratto, a winery which during the 1920's and 30's was making top sparkling wines, exporting its metodo classico all over Europe, North and South America, Africa and as far as the Far East.
Dedication to top quality is La Spinetta's only way of making wine and the same philosophy applies to Contratto. There are many passionate wine people involved in this new project; one of the most important is Andrea Rivetti, Giorgio's son, who has had a love for Champagne for many years. Andrea, in the past, has always made a small production of La Spinetta sparkling wines for his own private consumption, he now has ample opportunity to live his passion, supporting the winemaking of the Contratto wines.
Mauro Ferrero has been working for Contratto since 1978 when he began his apprenticeship and later learned how to become a maker of sparkling wine. The work includes the general work of cellar management, but also the skilled tasks of rémuage (riddling) and dégorgement (disgorgement), two crucial steps of making high-quality sparkling wine. In peak times, Mauro used to disgorge over 2,000 bottles a day, all by hand. Today this manual skill is an art, as manual disgorgement has been replaced by machines, that first freeze the yeast in the neck of the bottle, before the cap is opened and the wine gets disgorged. Mauro today still shows his manual skills to people visiting the winery, however one day unfortunately, skills like that will die out.
Carlo Rivetti and his son Marco love Champagne and just like the rest of the team fell in love with this beauty of a winery. Both help to oversee the vineyard work in the Oltrepo Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyards and are always available, when an extra pair of hands is needed.
Luca Cigliuti and Massimo Dossena only recently joined the La Spinetta / Contratto team, but they have been passionate wine lovers and experts for many years. Their passion for great wine brought them to Contratto. Both men are in charge of sales, Luca primarily for Export and Massimo for Italian sales. They welcome all visitors, who come to Contratto to taste wine and to see the amazing cellar.
In 2004 Anja Cramer left Germany to start a new venture in the wine world of Piedmont. Her love for wine and her skills in Marketing have contributed to the sales of La Spinetta over the past 7 years. Today Anja is also a proud part of the Contratto winery, putting her passion and efforts into the Marketing and Sales of Contratto's sparkling wines. In addition we all know, that a little bit of German organizing can't hurt in any Italian winery.
