Winning Wines

Late last year, Luca Garelli of Tenute d’Italia, visited Macau, Hong Kong and Shenzhen to present some of the companies best wines to customers and wine lovers in the region.  Before heading over to Hong Kong to attend the International Wine & Spirits Fair, Luca hosted a wine tasting and dinner at the cozy La Cucina Italian restaurant in Old Taipa Village and CLOSER had a chance to enjoy some of his wines from all around Italy.

 

“We started selling in Asia around five years ago,” says Luca, the company’s Wine and Export Manager.  “Our first client was in 2009 in Shenzhen and there have been great changes in the market since then. In Europe tastes change, but in Europe that change may take place over 10 years. In China it changes in just two years”. 

 

 

So the need to keep in regular contact with clients and understand their preferences, as well as introducing them to new products, is crucial.

 

Tenute d’Italia is essentially a family-owned company with some private partners.  The commercial branch of Morini Wines, the company deals with agronomic and enological consultancy, providing viticulture advice to many wine makers around Italy, as well as making a number of its own wines.

 

“Some companies that we work with have their own enologist, so we speak with them, we go to the winery together, we taste the wine together and decide the level of sugar and acidity and so on, so we are very involved in the production.  In other wineries we do everything ourselves,” explains Luca. 

 

“We work with some medium level wines and some high level ones.  In some regions, we have only one company, big or small, and in other regions like middle Romagna for example, we work with 40 different companies”.

 

Having such an expansive reach allows the company to not only produce very high quality wines, but also gives it the flexibility to offer very customized wines too.  

 

“Our company has the possibility to create new products. Some of our clients want something completely new, not only in terms of the packaging, but in terms of the wine itself, so we discuss what they want and try to find a solution for them,” notes Garelli.    

“We understood from the beginning that if you have only one wine, even the best wine in the world, with a very good relationship between quality and price, but the client wants something different, then there is nothing you can do. Our goal is to satisfy the needs of our clients specifically.” 

 

One of the company’s most successful projects has been its Santerno label, which aims to gather and develop the great winemaking traditions of the Santerno Valley, a scenic area that lies between the hills of Tuscany and Romagna.  Santerno’s wines are all based on grapes that are indigenous to the area – mainly Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet for the reds, and Pignoletto, Albana and Trebbiano for the whites.  

 

 

Last year the label won a number of awards and added three more at the “Asia Wine Trophy 2015” including a Gold Medal for it Merlot Rubicone I.G.P. 2012 “Sintria”; and Silver Medals for its Cabernet Sauvignon Rubicone I.G.P. 2013 “Potente” and Sangiovese Rubicone I.G.P. 2013.

 

Another wine from the Tenute d’Italia catalogue that found itself on the winner’s podium last year, for very different reasons, was the Treviso DOC Prosecco Extra Dry Millesimato by Cantina Vanzella, which was used for the official toasts at the 2015 Macau Grand Prix.  When not being sprayed on the race winners, it can be enjoyed in more refined settings, showing off the wonderful wine making traditions of the hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene in the heart of Treviso in the far North-east of Italy right next to Venice.

 

From the far North of Italy to the far South, one of the more unique wines sampled was the Susumaniello Salento I.G.P. “Serre” from Cantine Due Palme, a cooperative of up to 400 growers from the Salento peninsula of Puglia, in the ‘heel’ of Italy.  Here the grapes benefit from the arid, rocky soils and warm winds from the Ionian and Adriatic Seas, resulting in small knotted bunches of highly concentrated grapes with dense spicy flavours. 

 

“Susumaniello is an indigenous grape of the Apulia region and it means ‘donkey’ in the local language, because as a grape variety it is very hard working,” explains Luca.  “Serre is made from 100 percent Susumaniello and is very full bodied with a good nose and a rich, dark colour.  In the past this type of grape was not used very much because its production was very low, but today this is one of our best selling wines.”