From November the 4th to the 8th you absolutely cannot miss the Merano wine festival, an international event that we as Tenute Ugolini will participate on November 6th and 7th at table #319. The 31st edition of this initiative, titled Respiro e grida della Terra (literally Earth’s breath and scream), consists of four days entirely dedicated to the highest-quality wines, recognized both nationally and internationally. We at Tenute Ugolini are honoured to have been asked to participate.
Merano wine festival: here’s everything you need to know about the event!
The Merano wine festival will start on November 4th, 2022, with an opening ceremony that will start four days of wine tasting hosted by the best sommeliers available. The festival, which will include all the main companies in the field, will also host the Wine Hunter Award winners.
Naturally, we at Tenute Ugolini couldn’t miss such an occasion to carry on with our pride and joy: a certified biological production, that we passionately take care of every day. After a long, thoughtful selection process, we have chosen for you three of our best wines, the most celebrated by the critics. We have chosen to bring to the Merano wine festival our best bottles of San Michele della Chiesa, Monte Solane, and Valle Alta, a Classic Valpolicella, a Valpolicella Ripasso and an Amarone respectively. All three of them can count on multiple wins in the most important contests in the field, like the golden medal in the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, the Wine Hunter prize, and the Gilbert & Galliard prize.
Our wines
The first wine we will present comes from our Tenute Ugolini cellars, a Superior Classic Valpolicella 2013, San Michele della Chiesa. It’s a unique wine – produced during an excellent year – that we chose to celebrate together our shared love for wine. This Superior Classic Valpolicella has a long history, originated in the Abbey of San Zeno. The legend says that the monks who were in charge of San Michele had chosen the backyard of this small church to cultivate the vineyards and obtain the fine wines that they later gifted to the Abbot. It wasn’t a casual choice: the monks proved to have a great knowledge of the lands. In fact, the south-east orientation of the land and the type of terrain make the perfect environment for the grapes’ growth. It’s thanks to their knowledge of the lands that we are still able, nowadays, to get a fresh and tasty wine. Our 100% organic farming process is based on non-invasive methods that leave the grapes free to develop on their own time. The San Michele della Chiesa wine encloses not only the flavours of a millennial wine-making tradition, but also the essence of an ancient land, a generous valley that has been offering its products to us all.
The second wine that we will bring to the Merano wine festival, a real pride for our productions, is the Superior Classic Valpolicella Ripasso Monte Solane, 2016. The Monte Solane is the perfect companion for the San Michele della Chiesa, a tasty wine, with an intense flavour, whose quality is guaranteed by the long and accurate production process, which respects the growth times of the corvina grapes. These grapes are softly pressed the same day as the harvest, to get a fresh and fragrant wine. The dark and brilliant colour comes from the different steps of the wine-making, which consists of waiting for spring to pass the must with the Amarone pomaces, from which we are able to get the unique aromas and the strong structure. Everything is then given time to rest for 20 months in small oak barrels, in order to get – at the end – an organic wine with an intense perfume, that reminds you of ripe fruit, black pepper, tobacco and cocoa, with pleasant balsamic notes. The Valpolicella Ripasso Monte Solane is also called “the wine of generosity”, so much so that it is often related to a famous Omero quote “A crazy wine that pushes even the wisest man to start singing”.
The third – and last – wine that we’ll present at the Merano wine festival is our Classic Amarone Valpolicella Valle Alta, 2011. It is a particularly flavourful organic wine that has been defined by Berto Barbarani with the famous quote “how can one praise the virtues of this wine, that has the colour of both the dawn and the sunset, that is as wise and eloquent as Nestore, as lyric as Orazio and Catullo, melancholic as Aleardi and clever as the poems of Ceasar and Vittorio Betteloni?”. This fine wine has been prepared during a year, the 2011, which saw multiple changes in the weather, with a particularly rainy winter and a draught during the spring, which made the plants flower early. Far from being a problem, these changes have been a true blessing in disguise, as they allowed us to grow excellent quality fruit, which brought to an equally excellent wine.
We’ll wait for you
We at Tenute Ugolini are truly proud of being able to participate in this initiative, the Merano wine festival is an excellent opportunity to promote the best wine companies in the field, giving them a great platform to share the best of their productions with the best experts. It is thanks to such occasions that local companies are able to shine as they should, making the merits and the highest Italian quality known internationally.
We’ll be waiting for you on November 6th and 7th at table #319!
