Our producers’ wines reflect the authenticity and excellence that comes from generations of experience in the vineyard and in the cellar, together with an unwavering focus on quality.

Noelia Ricci

HomeNoelia Ricci

Noelia Ricci

Noelia Ricci website


The history of the property

Noelia Ricci is a project born in 2010 on an estate called Pandolfa which extends over 140 hectares in Predappio, at the foot of the Tuscan-Romagnolo Apennines. The property’s name, Pandolfa is believed to have been chosen because Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, known as the “Lupo di Rimini”,  lived here before setting out to sack the Castle of Fiumana in 1436. From 1626 to 1941 the owners of the estate were the Marquis Albicini. In 1941 the property passed to Commendatore (Knight Commander) Giuseppe Ricci, an entrepreneur from Forlì. During the Second World War, the Pandolfa estate found itself at the center of the tragic events of the war. It was occupied by the Germans and then attacked by Polish troops, while many of the locals took refuge in its cellars. Once peace returned, in the 1950s, Giuseppe Ricci began the renovation of the estate, involving well-known local artists, who created works of art that match the heritage of this area. Ricci also began to rethink agricultural production, which had been of great importance during the period of the Albicini, and bought two adjacent farms and planted Sangiovese, Trebbiano and Albana vines.

Family history

On Ricci’s death in 1980, his daughter Noelia, from whom the entire project takes its name, was the first to understand the potential of the original estate’s slopes. Driven by this strong vision, she began to plant new vineyards and to start construction of the winemaking cellar. Pandolfa is still owned by Ricci’s granddaughter, Paola Piscopo, who has used all her enthusiasm to give the Estate an important role in the territory. Today one of her sons, Marco Cirese, has taken the reins of the operation with the intention of continuing on the path to excellence with an eye to the tradition of this place and the native vines of Romagna.

The winery Noelia Ricci

Noelia Ricci was born from the idea of respect for the natural inclination of the land and a return to the origins of how the farmers once made a Sangiovese wine unique to Predappioin traditions. In 2010 Marco started by choosing the very best vineyard sites on which to focus the winery’s attention. Then a strong team was created to develop a winery which could translate the land into wines unique to their place. The decision was to avoid long extraction, high alcohol content and overly concentrated color. The goal was to make wines with a fine structure, a strong personality and an ability to develop complexity, while also producing wines for the pleasure of drinking. The first vintage was 2013 and, since August 2018, the winery is in the process of organic conversion.

The identity

The identity starts with the name, Noelia Ricci. The woman who inspired the birth of this project. Noelia, charismatic and authentic, a woman who believed in the potential of this land. A woman who kept her family together around the table. A tribute to the strength of a family identity, which still today, in this the fourth generation, distinguishes the winery’s journey.

To create a thematic look for their wine labels the Ricci family decided to use illustrations from the historical archives of the late nineteenth century, because in these figures there is that realism that is not photographic, but one which leaves expressive margin to the imagination. For their single-vineyard and most age-worthy wine, Godenza, they picked a monkey symbolizing the stylistic choice of a wine that goes back to the origins of the local Sangiovese winemaking traditions. A wine with its feet firmly planted in its land, which faithfully represents the vineyard site on a sandstone ridge that gives a unique flavor to this wine. They chose the image of a wasp on the label to portray zippy sting of their estate il Sangiovese. A whale is is on the Bro’ label of their Romagna Trebbiano as a reminder of the sea, which once covered these lands and as a symbol of memory, family and experience, an abstraction of time to immerse yourself in the unconscious.