Italy · Bolgheri & Etruscan Coast

Petra

A 300-hectare coastal estate in Suvereto where a Mario Botta winery cut into the hillside and a 2014 shift toward freshness changed what Maremma red wine could be.

The producer

Petra was founded in 1997 in Suvereto, a hill town on the southern Maremma coast where the Val di Cornia meets the Tyrrhenian Sea. Vittorio Moretti, who also owns the Franciacorta houses Bellavista and Contadi Castaldi in Lombardy, commissioned Swiss architect Mario Botta to design a gravity-flow winery cut into the hillside. The building moves juice and wine from harvest to barrel by slope alone. One hundred hectares of vine spread across 300 total, on soils that shift from volcanic tuff and clay at the hilltops to calcareous alluvial ground below, with sea breezes pulling in from the coast through the warmest months.

Francesca Moretti runs the estate today. In 2014 she brought in Piedmontese winemaker Beppe Caviola as an adviser, and together they reset the cellar. Two-pass harvesting now collects each block across several days to preserve acidity. Pre-fermentation cold maceration extracts colour and aroma before fermentation heat can strip them. Fermentation is capped at 27°C. New oak use was cut in half. The three red wines, Petra (Toscana IGT), Hebo (Suvereto Rosso), and Potenti (Toscana IGT), all carry that shift: less weight, more lift, the coastal hill made legible in the glass.

Known for

Coastal Maremma reds from a gravity-flow estate in Suvereto, reshaped after 2014 toward freshness and lower oak.

Notable facts

The story

The Tunnel

When the gravity-flow winery was being cut into the Suvereto hillside in the late 1990s, Vittorio Moretti asked for one addition that went beyond what the winemaking process required. He wanted a tunnel: a long passage bored deeper into the rock than the building needed, running further into the hill than any technical specification demanded. The tunnel was to be lined with French oak barriques, floor to ceiling, and used as a natural cellar where the rock temperature would hold steady through the summer without refrigeration. One account calls it slightly theatrical. Moretti had it built anyway, and it remains the most photographed part of the estate: a corridor of barrels disappearing into the dark of the hill, conceived by a man who understood that a winery is more than a production facility.

From the atlas

Petra

At A Glance

The Producer

Petra sits on a coastal hill in Suvereto, a small town in southern Tuscany where the Val di Cornia meets the Maremma plain and the Tyrrhenian Sea is close enough to bend the climate. The estate was founded in 1997 by Vittorio Moretti, who also owns the Franciacorta houses Bellavista and Contadi Castaldi in Lombardy. Petra was a different kind of project: 300 hectares on the Tuscan coast, roughly one hundred of them planted, with a gravity-flow winery commissioned from Swiss architect Mario Botta cut into the hillside.

Francesca Moretti runs the estate today as winemaker and CEO. In 2014 she brought in Beppe Caviola, a winemaker from Piedmont known for wines with freshness and lifted acidity, as an adviser. That collaboration changed how the vineyards are harvested and how the cellar is run, and the effect shows in the wines.

Place

Suvereto is an appellation town in the Val di Cornia DOC zone, on the southern Maremma coast between Livorno and Grosseto. At this latitude and elevation, the Tyrrhenian Sea moderates summer heat and pulls in afternoon breezes that slow ripening and help grapes keep acidity late into the harvest season. Suvereto earned its own DOC in 2011, and the appellation label appears on Petra's Hebo, a red wine built to reflect the immediate coastal hill setting rather than the broader Tuscan IGT category.

The soils shift by altitude. On the hilltops, volcanic tuff and clay hold water and limit vine vigour. Lower sites carry calcareous alluvial material, draining more freely and producing a different fruit weight. Both soil types are planted, and the vertical spread of the estate gives Petra more than one kind of raw material to work with across its three main wines.

Soil And Site

The hilltop parcels sit on tuff, a porous volcanic stone, layered with clay. Tuff retains moisture without waterlogging, giving vines steady access through dry summers. Clay adds density to the fruit. The lower parcels rest on calcareous alluvial soils, limestone-derived and well-drained, which tend toward brighter acidity and lighter tannin in the finished wine. The Tyrrhenian Sea lies close enough that saline air and coastal winds are part of the microclimate, working with soil type to keep the wines from tipping into the overripe register that warmer inland Maremma sites can produce.

Story

Vittorio Moretti chose Suvereto at a moment when Maremma was attracting outside investment from producers who saw potential in coastal Tuscany that the old Chianti zones could not offer. He commissioned Mario Botta not for decoration but for function: the winery works by gravity, using the slope of the hill to move juice and wine from crusher to fermenter to barrel without pumps. The building was dug into the hillside, and Vittorio proposed a long tunnel reaching deeper into the rock to serve as a natural cellar, its walls lined with French oak barriques.

For the first decade and a half, Petra's wines were made in the style of their era: ripe fruit, generous new oak, weight over freshness. When Francesca Moretti took the lead and brought in Caviola in 2014, the direction changed. The team introduced two-pass harvesting, picking the same blocks several days apart to gather fruit at different ripeness levels and preserve acidity. Pre-fermentation cold maceration was added to extract colour and aroma before fermentation heat could drive off freshness. Fermentation temperatures were capped at 27°C rather than allowed to climb higher. New oak use was cut roughly in half. Each change pointed toward the same target: wines with more lift, cleaner fruit, and a longer useful life in the bottle.

Vineyards And Cellar

The vineyards cover around one hundred hectares across the 300-hectare estate, farmed with an emphasis on sustainability. Attilio Scienza oversees viticulture. The two-pass harvest is the field decision: by returning to each block days after the first pick, the team collects grapes at slightly different ripeness points, which broadens the aromatic complexity and keeps natural acidity higher than a single-pass harvest would allow. Fruit arrives at the cellar with more range.

Inside the cellar, cold maceration before fermentation allows the skins to give up colour and tannin at low temperature, without the extraction that comes once fermentation heat begins. Holding fermentation at or below 27°C keeps primary fruit aromas in the wine. The shift away from heavy new oak use means the wines now show the Suvereto site more directly. The tunnel cellar, running deep into the hillside at natural rock temperature, handles barrel ageing without refrigeration.

Wines

Petra's range is built around three red wines across two label tiers. The flagship, Petra, is a Toscana IGT red from Bordeaux varieties, aged in French oak barriques. The 2019 vintage shows cassis, dried herbs, and graphite on the nose, with soft rounded tannins and enough mid-palate concentration for medium-term cellaring of five to ten years.

Hebo is the estate's Suvereto Rosso or Val di Cornia DOC red, carrying the local appellation rather than the broader IGT category. The 2021 vintage has ripe dark fruit on the nose, firm but rounded tannins, and a thread of fresh acidity that keeps the finish clean. It is built on the same post-2014 template as the flagship but sits at a lighter, more approachable weight.

Potenti, released as Toscana IGT, is the most full-bodied wine in the range. The 2020 vintage is described as powerful and voluminous, with abundant rounded tannins. It is made for extended cellaring and is the least immediately open of the three.

In The Glass

Across the range, the 2014 reformulation is audible in the way the wines hold together. The Petra flagship opens with dark fruit, dried Mediterranean herbs, and a graphite edge, a signature of cool-extracted Bordeaux varieties rather than warm-macerated ones. Tannins are present but rounded, sitting beneath the fruit rather than above it. The acidity line is clean enough to carry the wine through the mid-palate without flattening on the finish.

Hebo is lighter in frame: the dark fruit is riper and more immediate, the tannins rounded, the acidity fresh without sharpness. It drinks younger and more openly. Potenti moves in the other direction, with weight and volume from the outset. The tannins are abundant and need time in bottle to resolve, but the cooler fermentation and reduced oak mean the underlying fruit is not buried.

All three wines reflect the coastal hill setting: not the dense, extracted style of hotter inland Maremma, but something with more movement and more air.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with Hebo. It is the Suvereto Rosso or Val di Cornia DOC red from Petra's mid-range, and it carries the estate's post-2014 approach in its most accessible form. The 2021 vintage has ripe dark fruit, polished tannins, and fresh acidity that keeps the wine from feeling heavy. There is enough weight to make the coastal Maremma setting legible, and enough freshness from the two-pass harvest and capped fermentation temperatures to show what changed in 2014. It opens well within two or three years of release and holds for several more. Buy one bottle to drink now and another to revisit in three years; the difference will tell you more about what this cellar is doing than any tasting note.

Anecdote

When the gravity-flow winery was being cut into the Suvereto hillside in the late 1990s, Vittorio Moretti had one addition that was not strictly necessary. He wanted a tunnel. Not a room or a cellar in the ordinary sense, but a long passage bored deeper into the rock than the building required, running further into the hill than the winemaking process demanded. The tunnel was to be lined with French oak barriques, floor to ceiling, and used as a natural cellar where the rock temperature would hold steady through the summer. One source calls it slightly theatrical. Moretti had it built anyway, and it remains the most photographed part of the estate: a corridor of barrels disappearing into the dark of the hill, conceived by a man who was also building a Franciacorta empire in Lombardy and understood that a winery is more than a factory.

Final Word

Petra is a large coastal estate that changed its mind. The architecture was always ambitious: a Mario Botta gravity-flow building, a tunnel cellar in the rock, a hundred hectares of vineyard on a Maremma hill close enough to the Tyrrhenian Sea to feel the afternoon wind. What changed in 2014 was the philosophy, when Francesca Moretti and Beppe Caviola replaced oak and weight with freshness and acidity. The wines now read as coastal Tuscan rather than generically Maremman, and Hebo gives the clearest version of that shift at an entry price.

Sources

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