2018 Tenuta Sant’Antonio Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso

2018 Tenuta Sant’Antonio Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso

2018 Tenuta Sant’Antonio Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso A classic Valpolicella from the Castagnedi brothers grown in the Colognola ai Colli and Illasi areas in the east of the DOC. Ripe dark cherry with notes of fresh herbs and woodsmoke. The palate is full of juicy fruit and elegantly bittersweet on the finish, inviting a plate of cold cuts to the table.

Dalla Terra Winery Direct is a national agent and direct importer of a small and select group of leading, family-owned wineries in Italy. Dalla Terra means “from the earth” in Italian, and the estates we represent are terroir-driven icons not only of each province or region, but of Italy as a whole. Italian-focused from the very beginning, at Dalla Terra we pioneered a unique approach to bringing wines from Italy to the U.S. market.

Tenuta Sant’ Antonio

Dalla Terra was founded in 1990 by Brian Larky, who had developed a deep interest in wine more than a decade earlier and chose to get a degree in fermentation sciences from the University of California at Davis. He initially followed the winemaking path, with production jobs at Napa Valley wineries such as Far Niente and Domaine Chandon. Broadening his horizons, in 1985, Brian took a harvest job in Italy that stretched into five years working as a winemaker for the sparkling wine producer Ca’ del Bosco in Lombardy’s Franciacorta region. At that point, his focus shifted from being a winemaker to becoming an importer of Italian wines.

Brian developed an innovative approach with the Winery Direct model, where the goal was to minimize the footprint of the importer. The new company, Dalla Terra Winery Direct, was designed from the start to serve more as a facilitator for wines moving straight from Italian wineries to U.S. distributors rather than as a separate tier of its own. To make this idea work, Brian and his fledgling company needed two things: a cadre of excellent Italian wineries that shared the same vision of direct importation, and a sales team in the U.S. who were as devoted as he was to Italian wine and the direct import concept. If successful, this model would ultimately remove the import bottleneck and reduce the price of wines to consumers.