Nebbiolo wine grapes once gave only sweet, short-lived wines. That was a clear obstacle to the development of Piedmont’s oenology, which could not stand up to the French one. Surprisingly it was exactly the French, in the person of Juliette Colbert, who found a way out: in the XIX century, this noblewoman from Vendée, wife to marquis Carlo Tancredi Falletti, asked her own oenologist Louis Oudart to come to her dwelling in Barolo, Piedmont and create a wine for her that could compete against Bordeaux and Burgundy wines. Oudart immediately understood the potentiality in Nebbiolo grapes and devised a way to enhance its cultivation and the winemaking process, getting what we formerly know as Barolo. Statesmen like Camillo Benso of Cavour and the Savoy sovereigns showed Oudart their enthusiasm for his accomplishments by inviting him at court and at every formal meeting, so that the Barolo eventually began to be referred to as “the king of wines and the wines of kings”.

The Chianti Classico is strongly connected with the territory where it is produced. Nowhere else could it have had the features that make it a worldwide famous wine, the main of them being that this tiny portion of central Italy has the best soil for the Sangiovese grapes to grow and thrive. Thanks to the special climate of Chianti valley, they give birth to ruby red wines that fade to a garnet hue with ageing and smell with a delicate scent of spices. But not only Chianti Classico has to be produced in the Chianti area, it also has to comply with a series of rules specified by the DOCG regulation. One of the most important is about the percentage of Sangiovese grapes that is to be used in the Chianti wine making: in fact, it must not be inferior to the 80% of total grapes, while the remaining percentage can be filled both by native and foreign grapes from a list of authorised vines. Some examples are Canaiolo, Colorino, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes.

The vinification of the grapes at that time did not give the alcoholic degree necessary to satisfy the needs of the Romans who needed wine to be maintained during long journeys through the Empire. With our ancestors it was already in use to dry the grapes on the plant to get more sugar and to have a more alcoholic and velvety wine. If the drying of the grapes, however, was already in use in the southern colonies where it was easy to leave the grapes in plan or directly under the sun, in Valpolicella things were a bit different: the particularly humid and cool climate of the Veronese did not he allowed it.

Shortly thereafter, the solution of making the grapes wither in special floors. The result was a wine with a very close kinship with what we now call “Recioto”, a sweet wine to which fermentation is stopped before the natural sugars of the must run out completely and make it a dry wine. And so, legend has it, that the Amarone is born from an forgetfulness of a barrel of “Recioto” left to its fate and where once the fermentation is finished, the cellarman found a dry but incredibly soft and fragrant wine. Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara are the grape varieties protagonists in the blend that gives rise to Amarone. During the harvest the grapes are carefully selected, perfectly healthy bunches with intact skins. The harvest takes place with a slight advance compared to the traditional harvest times, to obtain a slightly higher acidity necessary for the final harmony of the Amarone wine.

With a centuries-old history, the Marzemino grape comes from a black berry vine currently grown in Trentino, in Veneto, in Friuli. Although its precise origins are still uncertain, the first traces of this vine in Veneto territory seem to date back to the mid-sixteenth century. The prestige and elegance of Marzemino, a prized red wine appreciated by connoisseurs, meant that it was already mentioned in the Don Giovanni, the famous opera by Mozart. Today, the grape is divided into two main varieties, Marzemino Gentile (or Marzemino Comune) and Marzemino Padovano. The bunches have rather large berries and an intense blue color, but the most specific characteristic of this grape is the presence of leaves which, in the season in which the fruit reaches its maturation, take on a similar color, almost purplish.

Among the typical wines of the Veneto, the Marzemino is distinguished by the delicacy and the combination of aromas, from red fruits, to plums, to dried flowers. The Venetian winemakers mainly produce this wine in the sparkling and sweet version, with a characteristic fruity, soft and pleasant taste.Thanks to the delicacy, the perfect degree of acidity and the minimum content of tannins, the best combinations of wine and food are above all roasts, grilled meats, polenta with mushroom sauce and specialties based on veal. In the sparkling variants, the wine produced with the Marzemino grape is beautifully accompanied by cod, freshwater and lagoon fish.This pleasant Venetian red wine, whose alcohol content is around 11% – 12%, is preferably served at a temperature of 14 ° C.

The Wine Rosso Conero of Marches is a wine that is produced from vineyards situated on the slopes of Monte Conero in Ancona province, near the Adriatic Sea.The Marches in the cultivation of wines has ancient traditions. The Ancona area has been affected by the Dorians and Doric civilization, since they founded the city of Ancona. And the Greek colonists 10 centuries BC left clear traces of viticulture and winemaking. The same can be said for the Etruscans to which you can assign the first technical notions of grape growing and wine processing, which became widespread in the Marche region where were installed the Piceni. Picenes knew that the grapes and the wine is demonstrated by the archaeological discovery of about 200 seeds of Vitis vinifera in a tomb in that Matelica of the seventh century. B.C. The influence of Rome allowed to Plinio to describe a hundred varieties of cultivated vines in Picena in his time and to say “on the Adriatic Sea can be cited, among others, the wine” Praetorian produced in the Ancona area” .

And, again, Apicius Marcus Gavius, Roman character of culinary art, reminiscent of a wine “anconetanum”, and quite full-bodied red.One of the most famous wine connoisseurs Marche was also Frederick Barbarossa. The most ancient legend tells us that Monte Conero is the last mountain emerged from the ancient Adria, a kind of Atlantis, now submerged. It is said that qualities of this wine were known since the time of Hannibal, who managed to cure some sick horses belonging to its own armed, with Rosso Conero wine. Is talk about Rosso Conero also in the time of the Benedictine monasteries: the documents found on the monks speak explicitly of healing done with the nectar extracted with the grapes grown on Monte Conero.  Andrea Bacci, physician to Pope Sixtus V, in a book of 1596 is much talk of the Conero wines. We find references recent in the poems by Giacomo Leopardi, Recanati, which in some of his lesser-known writings, he speak about wine with refer to wines produced on the slopes of Monte Conero.

The presence in the territory of many farms with a long wine tradition and historic homes built in the past few centuries allocating downstairs to the wine transformation have allowed the production of red wines that have faced the market with considerable success even in high level competitions. Enlightened producers and wineries, also of architectural interest, gave start to the designation of origin with the renewal and expansion of the vineyards in the 60 confirming the vine Montepulciano the ultimate expression of the link between grapes, wine and territory and enhances here its best features. The DOC Rosso Conero Wine has been recognized by the Denomination of Origin on 21 July 1967.