Bardolino Wine Achieves DOCG Status in Historic Festa dell’Uva
Seventy-two years well aged: how many of those does the “Festa dell’uva e del vino” truly count? Born in the 1930s, like many other agricultural events, it served as a tool of national propaganda (the more famous one being the wheat campaigns) in response to the economic sanctions imposed by the League of Nations against Italy’s colonial policies. Over all these years, the festival has accompanied, in favorable circumstances but even more during difficult times, a product like Bardolino wine, known worldwide and therefore requiring constant attention, care, and love to carve out a well-defined place in the imagination of enogastronomic lovers. It is, in fact, an avant-garde product in enology not only in Verona, and has achieved significant milestones over time, especially with the advent of the Consorzio di Tutela and later with the diversification of Bardolino DOC types, from the Classic produced in the oldest zone (covering all the territory of the communes of Bardolino and Garda and partly those of Lazise, Cavaion, Costermano, and Affi) to the Superiore, aged for at least one year, and to the types Bardolino Chiaretto, Bardolino Chiaretto Spumante, and Bardolino Novello, all protected by DOC status.
Starting this year, a further step forward has been taken with the recognition of the controlled and guaranteed designation of origin (DOCG) for Bardolino Superiore wines. This is an acknowledgment of particular prestige and pride for the entire Bardolino wine sector, which rewards the ecological originality of the Garda environment and its vinicultural vocation, as well as agricultural work, the choice and selection of local varieties; the certification and professional rigor in the vineyard and cellar; the enological research aimed at preserving and consolidating the potential intrinsic in the grapes, so they emerge at their best in the wine.
The DOCG indeed represents the result of a successful union of viticulture, enology, culture, and marketing within a coherent project, coordinated by the Consorzio di tutela, which has been presided over by Giuseppe degli Albertini over the last three terms and—since its establishment in 1969—by enologist Giulio Liut. In the challenge with increasingly demanding consumers, subject to trends, it is crucial to ensure perfect ripening of every berry, on each vine, in each selected vineyard, to achieve fruity, spicy, and mellow aromas that the evolution of taste seems to indicate as desirable characteristics for a DOCG.
But it also requires careful selection of soils, vine density per hectare, pruning that leaves the right number of buds per vine and per hectare, with a maximum grape yield of 90 quintals per hectare of specialized vineyard, with a wine yield not exceeding 70 percent, and a wine aging period of at least one year, starting from November 1st of the following year.
