The intuition came many years ago during a dinner in an elegant restaurant in the USA. A young Italian surgeon who was in Houston for a specialization in cardio-vascular surgery decides to allow himself the luxury of a lunch to celebrate his wife's birthday. When the bill arrived, the bitter surprise, that bottle of Soave which had sealed an act of love, froze spirits, the price was highly disproportionate. Years go by, the surgeon has gone to live in Ca' Pigneto, a beautiful villa inherited from his wife in Negrar in the heart of Valpolicella, the hilly area that precedes the beginning of the Veronese Pre-Alps, a land renowned since the times of ancient Rome for viticulture.
The house is an ancient 600th century convent converted into a manor house with a breathtaking 360-degree view that stretches from Verona to Lake Garda, surrounded by a centuries-old park and large expanses of meadows which, like an amphitheater, slope down for hectares to gentle terracing towards Verona, facing south. The surgeon, Carlo Adami, by now established as one of the most brilliant specialists, not only in Italy but internationally, in minimally invasive endovascular surgery, patenting in Italy and in Europe the first innovative surgical technologies which have ushered in a new era in the field of endovascular surgery and who have contributed to saving many human lives, he is by vocation and by profession used to always looking beyond the appearances of things and always forward. During his morning walks in the vast park of the residence, he realizes that those meadows, due to their geomorphological conformation, the pedoclimatic characteristics of the terrain, the action of the agents who shaped them, hide a hidden treasure under his feet. A wealth of history, culture, territory.
The Romans had already understood this, who had planted vineyards here that produced an intense wine, the Recioto with a particular flavour. Catullus spoke of "calices amariores", later Cassiodoro of a "recchiotto amaro" and viticulture has been the main activity of the farmers of these parts for centuries. Then in much more recent times it happened that in 1936, the manager of the Valpolicella social cellar who by chance had come across a barrel of recioto, forgotten in a corner, tasted its contents out of pure curiosity, and was amazed by the wine it was produced: "this is not a amaro, it is an Amarone". It still took years to perfect this new wine heritage of Valpolicella, until in 1968 we reached the official approval of the first production disciplinary and the recognition of the DOC of the different types included in the denomination "Valpolicella", "Valpolicella Ripasso", "Recioto della Valpolicella” and “Amarone della Valpolicella”.
The memory of that dearly paid wine and the lightning of that beautiful morning walk did not have an immediate sequel. Adami was by then an internationally renowned professor engaged on various fronts, surgical, research, studies, participation in international congresses. But the worm had begun to gnaw into his brain. That land, magical, could produce extraordinary fruits, it was almost an offense to his memory to leave it there only for the villa's aesthetic purpose and enjoyment, a lack of respect for what it could offer in the ideal connection with his thousand-year history. Fundamental was the meeting with the great winemaker of the GCNicolis area, descended from an old family of winemakers, who produced excellent wines, and then the acquaintance with some of the most noble families of Amarone wine producers in the area such as G.Quintarelli, M.Galli and S. Boni who were generous with advice.
And Adami decided to take the plunge. Amarone was an appreciated but still niche wine. Adami sensed its great potential. He certainly could not have foreseen that in the space of twenty years the Veronese red wines would have the good fortune they have had, alone occupying 60 percent of all Italian red wine exports, and that Amarone in particular with its soft tannins, its aftertaste of cherry and red fruit, its persuasive body would have conquered a fame that has led it to be one of the most requested wines abroad from the United States to the Asian continent.
Thus it was that the Prof decided to open a new front in his life, that of producer of fine wines Certainly the initial investments were heavy, we started from scratch, even massive excavation work was carried out, designed so that the nature of the land and its exposure to the Mediterranean climate could offer the vines the best harmonic vitality possible. Certainly the economic commitment was significant but in the end, considering how much he had paid for that bottle in Houston, the hope of making a good investment encouraged him.
To tell the truth, a little skepticism made itself felt in the family. But Adami carried on, accustomed, as he always has been, to the great challenges in the operating room as in life. And the facts proved him right. Ca' Pigneto Amarone quickly made itself known and appreciated.
Today the company has acquired a position rooted in the wine scene of Valpolicella. And it passed from hand to the new Adami generation: Veronica, supported by the brothers Nicolò and Angela, inherited from her father all the possible enthusiasm to carry on a project that focuses more on quality than on large numbers, and has launched an important of company reorganization to carry on the wine production towards further goals of excellence, promoting it not only in Italy, but also abroad.
Of the three wines produced, Amarone, Recioto and Ripasso, Amarone, Amarone della Valpolicella Ca' Pigneto docg is the main product.
The enthusiasm and love for this land handed down from father to daughter is all in it: aristocratic and captivating full-bodied and elegant wine with a ruby red color tending towards garnet with aging with important but silky tannins and perfectly integrated into the plot taste. It has an intense, elegant and complex bouquet with evident notes of ripe fruit and black cherry leather. Remarkable taste-olfactory persistence.
Luca Maroni, assigning the "Best wine ever" award to Amarone Ca Pigneto in 2015, expressed himself in these terms: "It is rare to find wines of this maximum concentration capable of offering themselves so soft, intense, sweet and powerful in taste and aroma. Here we have the full excellence of the fruit and spices not only in terms of reciprocal equi-intensity, here even more we perceive the maximum power and creaminess in the pure specificity of both. An oak of crystalline mintness, a plum of turgid oxidative vividness. Here we have a purplish and not orange fruit, with its first turgor still very much alive. Here the executive oenology, the quality of the fruit and the oak of elevation, the cleanliness in the development in the cellar, everything excels to reach these pulpy smoothnesses of balsamic fleshy plums. A great wine, with a harmonious convex sphericity”.
What to say more?
The grapes, Corvina and Rondinella, are selected and placed in plateaux where they remain for 3 months in drying. During this period there is a concentration of sugar, extract, flavors and glycerin. The pressing is carried out in January. The wine is left to mature in the cellar for 30 months in Slavonian oak barrels, then it is aged in the bottle for 6 months.
It lends itself perfectly to the combination with grilled red meats which, having a bitter tendency, want a fruity, soft wine with a good body that knows how to dry out the marked juiciness of the meat with good tannins and which dampens the sweet note with acidity and freshness
Cost 70 euro
Ca' Pigneto Winery
Via Pignetto 1
37024 Negrar (VR)
0457513790
info@capigneto.com
In the heart of the Valpolicella Classica, with an impressive 360° view of a true earthly paradise that sweeps over the entire famous valley, which has always been suited to the cultivation of vines, is Ca' Pigneto, a model farm of 15 hectares, dominated in its central part from a noble villa of the 1600s. The wines of Ca' Pigneto, Amarone, Ripasso, Recioto, are the result of accurate knowledge, traditions and planning aimed at the modernization of the family business which has been enriched in recent years with new plants indigenous and functional.
The agricultural activity already started by the Bompiani family, long-time publishers, continued thanks to Count Dionigio Serenelli with important innovative interventions, who was succeeded by his daughter Paola who still today, together with her husband and children, has been able to develop a strategy aimed at the full conversion of the company into wine and olive cultivation according to strict qualitative dictates and an offer aimed at a wider and more demanding clientele.
