From Veneto to Tuscany, Dal Cero Winery

Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - 11:00

We have some new wines to indroduce to you shortly.   In the meantime here's a little glimspe into the Italian winery that produce these exciting wines. 

The Dal Cero History

Our family story begins in 1934, in the province of Verona, when Augusto Dal Cero purchased, in the commune of Roncà, a very unusual piece of land, dominated by two extinct volcanoes, Crocetta and Calvarina. He knew that this steeply-ascending property would require much hard work, but he was not the man to be scared by hard work.
He had his heart so set on that land that he had had to sell another, in the commune of Montecchia di Corsara, to purchase it.

The two volcanoes had been there for over 40 million years, and the centuries had re-shaped them, but up on their slopes one still treads dark, almost black soil, composed of lava and tuff. This conglomerate is the geologic memory of an endless succession of eruptions and basalt flows that poured into the seas, which in those times surrounded the volcanoes; when the incandescent lava suddenly met the water, that encounter determined the glassy nature of the rocks that still make up the soils.

Augusto knew little about geology, but a lot about grapes. His instinct told him that if he dug into the woods-covered earth at the top of the volcanoes and planted vines in that ground, the vineyard would probably benefit from the mineral-rich soil. But the outbreak of the war, in 1940, stopped his projects, and forced him to become a soldier, leaving behind his vineyard and his family.

He returned after almost five years, almost all spent in the arid sands of the African deserts; he was physically in bad shape, but fortunately alive and alert. He had to start again from scratch and re-launch his farm.

No force on earth can stop a man who has a fixed dream, which in Augusto’s case was to enlarge the area that he would plant, right up to the peaks of the two volcanoes. He stopped only when he reached the very top, and found just clouds above.

The Dal Cero passion and philosophy

Critical attention must be paid to expectations related to drinkability, taste, and richness of flavour—all qualities that have always been hallmarks of the Dal Cero family style. Right from its very beginnings, the Dal Ceros have always seen wine as a way of reaching out and encountering others, a way of communicating through one’s senses, in frank simplicity. Simplicity, however, in no way implies banality. Just the contrary. Although the Dal Cero vineyards do not have official organic or biodynamic certification, the family’s philosophy is based on the concept of nature in balance. That means ensuring, in a purely natural way, balanced soil and protection of all its organisms, in order to obtain sound, healthy grapes and, therefore, high-quality wines.