Valpolicella and altitude: the new frontier
Tinazzi’s Poderi Campopian
The valleys of Valpolicella owe the beauty of their landscapes to the families who made winemaking not just a profession, but also a legacy that spans countless generations.
Among the innumerable vineyards that adorn the valleys of Valpolicella, there’s one new estate that stands out at an altitude of no less than 600 metres (2,000 feet) above sea level. This is Poderi Campopian, the Tinazzi family’s new property, lying in the heart of the Valpolicella Classico zone above the village of Fumane.
The Tinazzi family has always invested in order to achieve higher quality, ever since they entered the wine industry 50 years ago, when Eugenio Tinazzi and his son Gian Andrea decided to pioneer Valpolicella wines on the export market. Today, Gian Andrea’s children, Francesca and Giorgio, have joined the family business and help their father produce high-quality Amarone and Ripasso wines. Driven by a proactive and entrepreneurial spirit, the Tinazzi family has expanded its properties and now owns over 30 hectares of vineyards spread over the valleys of Valpolicella and Lake Garda.
Poderi Campopian is the latest sizeable investment by this family company, designed to produce a limited number of exceptionally high-quality wines. The estate includes 12 hectares of vineyards facing southwest, where Verona’s native grapes - Corvina, Molinara and Rondinella - benefit from excellent exposure to the sun and express their best qualities in wines such as “Marziale” Amarone della Valpolicella Classico DOCG and “Lunante” Valpolicella Ripasso Classico Superiore DOC. Flavours of dried grapes stand out in these premium, full-bodied reds and enhance the complexity of tastes that include hints of plums, chocolate and spices.
In the early 2000s, the family’s passion to explore and invest in new trends brought them to the South, to the “heel” of Italy, in Puglia. It was in 2001, during a trip to Salento, in the area near Manduria, that Gian Andrea Tinazzi found himself at Feudo Croce, where the traditionally way Primitivo grapes are cultivated fascinated him. The family quickly understood the potential of those low-trained “alberello” vineyards and acquired a 68-hectare estate in Carosino, near Taranto, where they now produce the multi-awarded Feudo Croce “Imperio” Primitivo di Manduria.
“Poderi Campopian… designed to produce a limited number of exceptionally high-quality wines”