After several years working for more conventional wineries, Chiara Penati and her husband Michele Conoscenti started Oltretorrente in 2010.  Both agronomists from Milan who had worked all over Italy, they had several ideas about where to create their own reality and decided on the sleepy village of Paderna, set in the hills of the Tortona region (Colli Tortonesi) in southeast Piedmont, where there are only 30 estates bottling wine.  The name Oltretorrente means “Beyond the Stream,” in reference to the Scrivia, a tributary of the Po River, but it could be interpreted as “Countercurrent.”  The estate covers only 5 hectares, planted with vines that range from 15 to 100 years old at an altitude of 300 meters.