Cantina di Custoza
50 years of pioneering winemaking in Italy
Just outside Verona, in the winemaking heart of Italy, with vineyards in the hills of Lake Garda, where wine has been part of the landscape and winemaking a local skill for over a thousand years. This is the place where 83 vignerons got together 50 years ago to combine forces, make ambitious plans, and found the “Cantina di Custoza”.
The territory of Custoza is unique in viticultural terms: a perfect symbiosis between the lake and its hills. Lake Garda has the mass to create its own microclimate, very temperate and benefitting from constant breezes. This is where, millions of years ago, a glacier carved out the biggest morainic amphitheatre in the Alps, thereby creating the rolling hills that are home today to the vineyards of Custoza.
History and man have done the rest, giving life to Custoza wine: a blend of native grape varieties - Garganega, Trebbiano Toscano, Friulano and Fernanda – in which the minerality coming from chalky soil is in perfect harmony with the finesse and aromatic qualities from the constituent grapes.
Over the years, Cantina di Custoza has grown, and there are now 200 vignerons harvesting grapes from a viticultural resource of 1000ha of vineyards in the province of Verona, making it one of the benchmark winemaking entities of the region.
“Since its foundation in 1968, the Cantina has always aimed to flank traditional viticultural practices with the most innovative vinification, maturation and bottling techniques,” says oenologist Dr Luca Oliosi. “This philosophy, based on quality and tradition, has little by little brought prestigious awards to Cantina di Custoza, such as for example, the prize for Best Winery in the Veneto awarded by Vinitaly in 2013, and Best Co-operative awarded in Germany.“
The portfolio of wines the company presents to the market today is not just a sign of its capabilities; it is also a demonstration of the natural viticultural richness of its territory, the Verona region, with its many different native grapes.
Of course the Cantina is a leader in the production of Custoza DOC, but it also makes other classic wines from the Verona area: Bardolino, Valpolicella, Soave and Pinot Grigio delle Venezie.
The Cantina’s sparkling wine, Radetzky, has been a favourite for parties and family celebrations over the last 30 years.
Val dei Molini
Research into vineyard zoning in the Cantina di Custoza’s vineyards led to the introduction of a quality project and the “Val dei Molini” range of wines in 2001. The idea was to make a superior range of wines by subjecting every single cart-load to precise and scrupulous quality analysis. This was an instant success and has now become the core business of the Cantina, providing freshness for the whites - Custoza, Garganega and Soave - charm for the Rosé Chiaretto, and body for the important reds -Valpolicella and mono-varietal Corvina.
Finally came the ambitious and pioneering decision, in 1994, to invest in “impact zero” viticulture by using exclusively natural products in pest control. “This was a very ambitious project in its time, even if we felt it to be an obligatory step when dealing with our own vineyards. It was only made possible by the active
cooperation of all our growers guided by the experience of our technical staff. We were the first to get organic certification and today, 25 years later, our organic wines are appreciated in numerous European countries,” comments the export manager, Nicodemo Begalli.
50 years young
The fiftieth anniversary of the Cantina di Custoza is an important achievement, which will be commemorated at Vinitaly 2018 in the company of the Cantina’s principal domestic and foreign partners. The past will be celebrated with pride, but Above: Harvesting in the Custoza hills wine producing area west of Verona with the full knowledge of how important it is to concentrate on goals for the future. The aim is to make viticulture always more sustainable for the region, to increase the range of organic wines, and to refine the processes of integrated viticulture that the Cantina teaches its vignerons suppliers.
The wines produced have all had new packaging and will always be produced as expressions of their territory of origin in the traditions of the Verona area. There’s one big new release for the Garda area: the launch of a Garda DOC Spumante – vinified as an “extra dry”.
As Cantina President, Dr Giovanni Fagiuoli, says, “the fiftieth anniversary is not a point of arrival so much as a point of departure. With the enthusiasm of a youthful, motivated and resourceful staff, success is assured in the coming years.”