Gaja

He was the first to understand that the export was the trump card for Italian wine: his products were started being offered on the U.S. market. Today he has a hundred hectares of vineyards in Piedmont, and more than two hundred in Tuscany, adding that the production Piedmont with the most famous Tuscan wines, Brunello di Montalcino in the head.

Oenologist Guido Rivella is the soul of all the wines from the Gaja family. When, in the mid-sixties, he joined the tour of great food, has an excellent array of wines. Then come the cru: the first, San Lorenzo in 1967. In 1970 Sorì Tildin and in 1978 it was the turn of Costa Russi. Today the brand means 92 hectares property carried out in full respect of nature, for a production of about 350,000 bottles a year.

Gaja Wine Awards

Precious bottles, which perfectly reflect the personality of Angelo, or rather his way of understanding the wine. He was the first to dare to innovate this wine with techniques that go after killing dizzying production per hectare (for better quality), to control fermentation temperature, the use of caps and long aging in oak barrels. There are many magazines that have talked about him as a true legend of the wine world, considering that his Barbaresco 1985 was defined by Wine Spectator "the best wine ever produced in Italy ", in 1998 the British Decanter elected him" Man of the Year "and, finally, in 2011 still American Wine Spectator honored even by their cover.

He was also awarded as Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the prestigious German magazine of reference dedicated to the business of international wine Meininger's Wine Business International, for a successful life as a man who made history, innovated, looked over and wagered bringing its wines and its name in the Olympus of world enology.

We are at the Giuseppe Quintarelli winery. Silvio Quintarelli founded the company at the turn of the 20th century. The first vineyards of this historic winery were located in Figàri in the municipality of Marano di Valpolicella. Even then its wines were popular overseas and indeed were exported to the United States in small oak casks and demijohns. In 1924, the company moved to the valley and its present location and it was here that Silvio and his family continued their business. The 1950s brought generational handover, with Giuseppe, the youngest son, now managing the winery. He is the heart and soul of Quintarelli wines.

Quintarelli wines: perfect for aging

He was the one who gave the winery its name, who wrote its history, ensuring the success of Amarone and making his wines famous in Italy and around the world. Giuseppe is the one who has developed the winery, leading it to grow and innovate. However, he has never lost sight of what has given it strength over the years, that is, the traditional method, allowing only a few bunches to fully ripen, respecting nature and its seasons, using exclusively natural materials for growing the vines, handling the grapes and the wine. The wines in the Quintarelli cellars have two characteristics in common: a natural disposition for ageing for at least 10 years in wooden barrels and in bottles, which improves the wine and its characteristics and a liveliness that continues after the bottle has been opened.

Sassicaia: top wine of Tenuta San Guido

Sassicaia is the Tenuta San Guido estate's top wine, whose history dates back to the 1920s. This was when young Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, a student in Pisa, decided to follow his dream and create a purebred wine. French Bordeaux wine was his point of reference and that of the aristocracy of the time. Later when he and his wife moved to the San Guido estate, he started experimenting and, realising just how similar this area of Tuscany is to the French subregion of Graves in Bordeaux, he decided to attempt to grow vines here, a zone hitherto unknown to the world of wine. This led to Sassicaia, which, for nearly 20 years (1948-1967), was produced strictly for private consumption. Over the years, leaving the wine to age in the estate’s cellars, he realised that with time, what had previously seemed defects became virtues. And so, in 1968, Mario Incisa della Rocchetta decided to launch on the market the first vintage of this italian fine red wine, which was given a welcome equal to that of a Premier Cru from Bordeaux. Along with Sassicaia, the Tenuta San Guido estate also produces Guidalberto and Le Difese.