The Company Crossed by the ancient Francigena Road, which in the medieval time led the pilgrims from Canterbury to Rome, surrounded by two natural parks, the Taro river Park and the Carrega Woods Park, Monte delle Vigne is fully merged with the harmonious landscape of the gentle hills around Parma, raising up to three hundred meters high. The ancient route followed by the pilgrims divides the white grapes facing east, Malvasie and Sauvignon, from the autochthonous reds exposed to west, Barbere and Bonarde. In the centre of the vineyard the Merlot, the Chardonnay and the distinctive Lambrusco, and with them the new winery, hypogean, with a gravity pressing system, perfectly merged with the surrounding landscape and designed to get the best qualitative result from what Nature is offering us. Sixty hectares of high density vineyards in the heart of the Colli di Parma area, with such different exposures to grant grapes on different sides the privilege of a homogeneous and full ripening. The company takes his name from a medieval chronicle of Frà Salimbene De Adam, which called this area "Li monti de le vigne". Gentle hills, soft lines that from 300 meters of altitude fall down to the right bank of the Taro river. Deep soils, rich in calcium and clay, strongly minerals, which enable the grapes to develop structure, intensity and  aroma. And finally the climate, mild even in winter, while during summer the air which rises from Taro river creates temperature changes of ten degrees between day and night, essential condition to produce excellent wines. When, in 1966, Paolo Pizzarotti took over the running of the family farm, he was well aware that his mission was to continue what had been done by three generations of his family before him. He was to move on to building houses, bridges, airports, dams, museums, undergrounds and other most forward-looking structures, to make his company the third largest construction company in Italy. The family farm and surrounding land, which he had tended to with such care after the death of his father, was rented out to the Auricchio family, who grew maize and alfalfa on those Parma hills. In 1983, on the hill land bordering on Paolo Pizzarotti's estate, Andrea Ferrari began his extraordinary journey towards a dream. He knew that the area historically had a strong winegrowing vocation, that since Medieval times it produced some of the best wine in the area, and that since the early 1800s the hills had represented the heart of the "DOC Colli di Parma" area, before the flourishing vines were struck down with Phylloxera. Ferrari's idea was not simply to produce good wine, concentrating on the most typical products of the area, but to succeed in producing still red wines in this area, which had always been known rather for its sparkling reds. This dream began to bear its fruits in the early 90s, with the production of Nabucco, an IGT red that is refined in barriques for 12 months and then in bottle for other 12 months, the wine that Andrea Ferrari had always dreamed of and which he immediately began to make famous with the " Monte delle Vigne" brand name. In 2004, when the Auricchio family decided not to renew the lease on the Pizzarotti estate, Paolo Pizzarotti was at rather a loss, he certainly didn't think he could return to his youthful passion for the land. But then Andrea Ferrari turned up at his door, and it didn't take him long at all to decide to join forces with the winegrower, adding to the Monte delle Vigne business a further 150 hectares of terrain that bordered on the original estate, splendidly exposed lands with a clear vocation for wine production. And thus a new adventure began, new but always autochthonous vines were planted at a rhythm of 10 hectares per year: today there are 60 hectares of vines, and the company produces 350,000 bottles a year, aiming to increase soon this figure to 700,000. Paolo Pizzarotti, also brought with him his construction skills, building a new cellar complex that offers an extraordinary mix of tradition, technique and architectural beauty. In these new premises, all the grapes grown on the company estates are turned into wine: the system is highly automated, the bottling plant is fully automatic, the wine-pressing gravitational, and the precious nectares can be refined in an underground barrel house composed of 700, 225-litre barriques. The project is ambitious, but is becoming more and more concrete: achieving excellence by processing only autochthonous vines, pursuing an uncompromising level of quality. As Paolo Pizzarotti and Andrea Ferrari like to say, the best wines are yet to come. But even those produced until now have been able to please even the most demanding palates: present in the most important oenological guides, the wines of Monte delle Vigne have already got the most prestigious awards from leading industry experts. Duemilavini, Veronelli and Gambero Rosso, among others, consistenlty rank them among the best italian wines.