Alanera 2022: bottle and closure update.
Starting with the 2022 vintage, this wine will be bottled in a lighter bottle and sealed with a screwcap.
This change is a part of Zenato‘s long-term sustainability strategy, which began three years ago with the Equalitas certification.
Through this and other ongoing efforts, their goal is to actively contribute to a more sustainable future for all of us.
THE WINE:
Alanera is a tribute to Sergio’s legacy of bringing understanding, wisdom and rigorous work to viticulture in Valpolicella. Alanera’s fruit hails from the Costalunga vineyard. The site’s landscape is remarkable as it overlooks the city of Verona, while partly hugging the Garda Lake and being seemingly embraced by the impressive Monte Baldo and Lessinian mountain ranges.
3 Swallows: Alanera’s three swallows serve as symbol to these landscape elements as well to its trio of native grapes: Corvina, Rondinella and Corvinone.
Zenato: the story of a family that firmly planted its roots in the land. It was made possible thanks to the passion and entrepreneurial vision of the estate’s founder, Sergio, who managed to fulfill his greatest dream: to create a winery capable of harvesting the fruits of the earth and transform them into emotions with matchless flavor.
Today, more than 60 years later, the results are testament to his extraordinary vision.
A wonderful story took shape thanks to his vision and today its star is his family: wife Carla and children Alberto and Nadia.
Their eyes and their heart continue down the path that Sergio laid out with great clarity as he steadied the course toward quality and love for their land. Over time, that land wasn’t just Lugana but also Valpolicella, with its celebrated red wines and their matchless aromas.
Taking over the Costalunga estate, in the heart of Valpolicella Classica, Sergio Zenato wanted to measure himself in a new venture, after making the most out of his Lugana vineyards: to make it a model vineyard, beautiful to look at, cared for in every detail, in which to apply modern agronomic techniques and at the same time resume the traditional methods that had defined the Valpolicella landscape.
In a thorough manner, Sergio Zenato drew the distribution on the land of the vines selected for the production of the different wines, going so far as to indicate the direction of the rows so that the vines could receive maximum benefits from the sun. He took special care to make the soil work well to achieve a dry and permeable soil without water retention.
A passionate dedication that we read in the construction of the characteristic dry-stone walls, at first sight elegant support structures, in actual fact an efficient containment system that guarantees the vine the three fundamental elements it needs: the warmth of the sun and the ventilation of air and water thanks to the gaps existing between the stones of the walls and the flaky crumbles of the subsurface.
“Sergio Zenato manicured the morainic hills for years, from the most strategic observation point on the Garda Lake in Peschiera. His reflection was cast over the largest body of blue in Italy. And since the 1960s, he saw in Trebbiano di Lugana something that few others had intuited: that the color, aromas, and favors of the white wine it produced could travel the world.”
In the flash of an eye and the wonder of Lake Garda is all there: in the beauty of the landscape; in the naturalist, historic, and artistic value of the land; in the mild climate.
The secret of Trebbiano di Lugana, a native grape variety planted on the southern banks of the Garda Lake, is hidden in its origins.
With the backdrop of this pristine setting, the gates of the Santa Cristina estate open up on to a broad road with elegant red rose bushes on either side.
They are the silent sentinels to whom the Zenato family has entrusted their rows of vines.