In the cellar we try to enhance every single grape variety as much as possible, but above all we try not to alter what the vineyard gives us, already healthy and ripe.
Therefore the processes for each style of wine are very different, but we always respect the characteristics of the variety and the vintage at the same time. Also in the cellar, as in the vineyard, man intervenes as little as possible on the grapes, without speeding up the natural processes of transforming grapes into wine.
The grapes for making sparkling wines usually come from quite young vineyards, starting from the sixth-seventh year of production, when the yield per hectare is around 9-10 tons. For wines made from non-aromatic white varieties, there is no maceration on skins, just gentle crushing and then the free-run juice is drawn off and fermented under temperature control. Second fermentation takes place in pressure tanks with selected yeasts. There is absolutely no use of concentrated must, only the naturally sweet free-run juice preserved at low temperatures.
Fermentation (both alcoholic and malolactic) of must for making sparkling reds, wines with considerable structure for this kind of style, is done in vats. After cold tartaric stabilization, which occurs naturally during winter, the wines undergo second fermentation in pressure tanks with the addition of free run juice from the same grapes.
Our wines are not microfiltered and are bottled in the cellar. After bottling, there is further maturation in bottle which lasts for a few months.
The philosophy of our winery is embodied in an important still white, a monovarietal wine made from 100% Malvasia di Candia aromatica grapes. This decision comes from the realization of the considerable potential of the variety, a realization supported by the experience of old vine growers in the area and by the results achieved with simple sparkling wines that we still keep in the cellar after many years. The grapes for this riserva come from very old vines, with very low yields (3 tons per hectare); they are harvested late in crates at the beginning of October, when the grapes show the first signs of raisining. After crushing-destemming, the must remains on the skins for about 20 days, at a low temperature. After drawing off, part of the wine is put in small barrels, while the rest continues malolactic fermentation in vats. After the following summer we proceed with the blending, followed by bottling. Maturation in bottle continues for several months, until we consider the wine ready for release.
We started producing still red wines at the beginning of the 1980s when my father bought some Slavonian oak barrels to age wines for short periods. When I started working in the winery, we decided to work on the quality in the vineyard in order to obtain wines with more structure with respect to previous harvests. We also lengthened maceration and the period of ageing in wood. In this way we obtained long-lived wines that were already interesting in the early years but more opulent and balanced after some time. As well as our Gutturnio riserva, we decided to aim at a monovarietal wine from Bonarda grapes, given the extraordinary suite of aromas and phenolics of this grape variety. All of our red wine riservas mature in wood for more than a year. The choice of wood for maturation is not random, but depends on the vintage. Our aim in fact is to obtain structured wines while maintaining the characteristics of the variety.
As per tradition in the Val Tidone, we keep on selling wine in demijohns. We do this because we want to keep our ancestors’ tradition alive and we like meeting the enthusiasts who love to bottle their wine personally and feel proud of their wine, which is ours, too.