Ten miles east of the city of Verona in northeast Italy’s Veneto region, Tenuta Santa Maria alla Pieve comprises a model wine estate encompassing 54-acres vineyard and an adjoining winery and cellars housed within an imposing and magnificently restored medieval farmhouse that has stood on the property for over 500 years. For owners Gaetano Bertani and his sons Giovanni and Guglielmo, however, this outwardly tranquil, bucolic setting in fact represents a hotbed of experiment and a laboratory for new ideas.

Tenuta Santa Maria lies in the commune of Colognola ai Colli in Veneto’s Val d’Illasi zone, on the borders of the Valpolicella and Soave DOCs. The property has been in the Bertani family since 1845 and has always remained independent of the family’s larger, more commercial enterprise, Cantine Bertani — recently sold by the Bertani family in 2012.

With a history of winemaking in the Veneto extending over 400 years, the Bertani family can take credit for a long list of local wine firsts. In the 1850s, the Bertani family became the first to bottle and sell Veronese wines abroad, creating a worldwide demand for Soave, Ripasso and appassimento-style reds that continues to this day.

More recent generations spearheaded the application of longer aging techniques to the local sweet and/or sparkling Recioto della Valpolicella reds, resulting in the legendary red now known as Amarone.

Since inheriting Tenuta Santa Maria in 1971, Gaetano Bertani has run with the family’s reputation for risk-taking and innovation. Starting in the 1990s, Bertani initiated a dramatic overhaul of the estate vineyards, becoming the first to introduce high-density plantings at levels previously unknown in the Veneto

Vineyards at Tenuta Santa Maria are planted to 9,500 vines per acre (three times the local average), trained to heights of no more than 50 inches, with a distance between rows of no more than 43 inches and no more than a meter between each vineyard. The result is per-vine yield of just 2 lbs of fruit. Winter pruning, selection of spring buds, thinning of grape bunches and the harvest of grapes destined for a light appassimento-style drying at Tenuta Santa Maria are all conducted by hand.

Bertani was also among the first local growers to experiment with international grapes (and the first to plant Syrah), taking care to pair individual varieties to specific sections of the Tenuta Santa Maria estate. In addition to the native Garganega grape responsible for Soave, the property is planted with Chardonnay and Merlot, plus smaller amounts of Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon Blanc and Syrah.

Grapes for the estate’s Valpolicella and Amarone wines are sourced from vineyards further along the Illasi Valley, in the Valpolicella DOC, now owned in entirety by Gaetano and his sons following the sale of Cantine Bertani

Originally published in October 16 2012 on Shanken News Daily