Poggio di Sotto

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.

Based in the province of Perugia, in the heart of the municipality of Montefalco, this company was founded in 1971 by a textile businessman - Arnaldo Caprai - who decided to follow his dream and produce wine. In 1988, he handed the reins of the company over to his son, Marco, who, with enthusiasm and dedication, added that extra drive that led to the final recognition of his products on the wine scene.

Sagrantino di Montefalco: Caprai's special wine

In 1993, the Sagrantino di Montefalco selection (which celebrated the company’s 25th anniversary) finally and undisputedly sealed Marco Caprai’s reputation as a great Italian wine producer.

Today, 40 years after its foundation, the company has made huge progress in terms of experimentation and research and also in the agronomic and oenological field, while still preserving its original identity and guiding principles of tradition, innovation and territory.

Gianfranco and Graziella believe that, to obtain a fine product, you need to draw on past experience, fully understanding it, in order to verify and innovate it with modern experimental techniques. This is why the wines produced on the Case Basse estate are the result of research and study. Backed by faculties of agriculture in various universities and the department of microbiology in Florence, Casa Soldera wines are supported by an electronic control unit that checks the weather all year round and by careful study of the entire vinification stage, allowing control and analysis of the wine from the vine to the glass.

They do all this while respecting traditional cultivating techniques, with weed killer-free fertilising, a structure and organisation of the vines that allow for manual processing, dual pruning, thinning of the grapes and limited defoliation in the autumn that helps the fruit to ripen properly.