2015 Tenuta Santa Maria Alla Pieve Valpolicella Superio

Behind the bertani family name lie centuries of winemaking expertise. When, at the start of the last half of the 1800s, brothers Gaetano e Giovan Battista Bertani, pictured above, set out to establish a new benchmark for excellence in their craft, they were already building on a firmly established viticultural heritage. Official documents from as early as the mid-fifteen hundreds can attest to the family’s activity in the Valpolicella region. Combining their deep respect for tradition and love of the land with commercial savvy and innovative drive in both the areas of production and cultivation, the brothers Bertani built an enterprise unique to the Veneto of their epoch. With a forward-looking spirit, they introduced revolutionary vine growing techniques developed by agronomist Jules Guyot, techniques to which Gaetano Bertani had been exposed during his years of political exile in France for his active role in the Italian Unification Movement against the Austrian Empire.

Begun in the early years of the Kingdom of Italy, the nascent endeavor achieved rapid and noteworthy commercial success. The brothers Bertani became the first in the region to bottle and sell Veronese wines such as Valpolicella Ripasso, Recioto and Soave on a large scale. Backed by a high quality product attained through the introduction of new cultivation techniques —the Guyot method, planting of the vines in low-standing, high-density rows, single branch pruning in Spring, and subsequent green pruning— and enological innovations such as the Ripasso method which involves a second fermentation of the Valpolicella created by ‘passing’ over Recioto grape skins, Gaetano and Gian Battista steadily expanded their market to Great Britain, Germany and the United States, winning recognition through winemaking competitions both national and international.