VIGNALI VARAS

Trentino / Italy

Trentino’s Vignali Varas and its winemaker Giovanni Frapporti have native wines in their blood. Since 1689, Giovanni’s family has been cultivating grapes in Vallagarina, a valley nestled between Lake Garda and the Dolomites, known as the “bridge between Trento and Verona”.

While regenerative farming is on everyone’s minds, Giovanni’s family has practiced it since the beginning, farming according to the family rule to “be Biodiversity keepers”.

According to Giovanni, “We respect the ecosystem where the vine is just one little piece of a big natural process. Lots of flowers, weeds, insects and animals live within the vineyards up in our mountain’s terraces. We do not use herbicides and we don’t work the soils. Fertility and vitality of the soils allows us to obtain grapes that are able to tell stories about our land”.

The result is an artisanal wine that represents Vallagarina with the blend of the 3 typical ancient varieties of this Alpine Valley: Marzemino, Enantio, and Casetta. Marzemino is an old variety that was brought to Trentino during Venetian rule more than 600 years ago, traveling via the Silk Road directly from the Caucasus, the cradle of world viticulture.

Enantio and Casetta are two alpine vines whose presence in the area is lost in time. They survived the last glaciation by sheltering in the favorable basin of Lake Garda and Mount Baldo. They are the offspring of two crosses between wild vines and the ancient varieties of vitis vinifera which have now disappeared.

As a steward of the ancient varieties of Vallagarina, Giovanni grows and vinifies each separately, making the wines in the most traditional and least invasive way possible, with long macerations on the skins in concrete and amphora. The wine is deliberately unfiltered with no sulfites, making it alive and changeable over time, truly representing the area where they are grown.

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VIGNALI VARAS

Trentino / Italy

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