The Vintage Tractor Gathering in Lugana brought historic farm machinery and agricultural enthusiasts to the southern shores of Lake Garda on Sunday 20 September 2026, celebrating the rural heritage and peasant traditions that shaped Sirmione’s Turbiana wine country.
Now in its 8th edition, the event was organized by US Rovizza in collaboration with the cultural association Il Volano, under the official patronage of the Municipality of Sirmione. The gathering provided an authentic window into the twentieth-century mechanization of the Benaco countryside, where small family farms transformed marshy, stubborn morainic clays into one of northern Italy’s most acclaimed white wine export zones.
Historic Machinery Parading Through Lugana Vineyards
The day commenced at the Sirmione Sports Center in Rovizza, where dozens of impeccably restored agricultural machines gathered for public inspection. Among the displayed vehicles were legendary Italian tractors that powered the post-war agrarian renaissance, including hot-bulb single-cylinder Landini models, vintage Fiat crawler tractors, classic Same air-cooled workhorses, and rare Porsche-Diesel tractors.
A convoy of vintage tractors then set out on a scenic procession along the rural lanes of Lugana, winding past family-owned estates and lush Turbiana vineyards laden with ripe fruit awaiting harvest. Spectators lined the route as the historic machines made their way toward the lakeshore park of Punta Grò before returning to Rovizza, illustrating the profound contrast between modern peninsula tourism around the Scaliger Castle in Sirmione and the quiet agricultural hinterland that sustains it.
Plowing Trials and Peasant Ingenuity
Following a traditional communal lunch featuring local grilled meats and polenta, participants gathered in an adjacent stubble field for the event’s centerpiece: historical plowing trials. Veteran tractor operators demonstrated the skill, balance, and mechanical intuition required to cut clean, uniform furrows using vintage single-share and double-share plows.
The heavy, compact clay soils characteristic of the Lugana basin—historically known as creta—demanded immense engine torque and precise furrow management from early twentieth-century machinery. Preserving these hands-on working demonstrations offers younger generations and international visitors tangible insight into the physical labor that predated modern precision viticulture.
The Agricultural Heritage Behind Lugana DOC Wine
While Sirmione is celebrated worldwide for the Roman imperial grandeur of Catullus’ Grottoes and luxury thermal spas, its southern plains have maintained agricultural continuity since antiquity. Known in Roman chronicles as the Silva Lucana—a dense forest of oak and beech—the territory was gradually reclaimed through centuries of Benedictine and peasant drainage.
Today, the same mineral-dense, calcareous clay soils that challenged early tractor operators impart signature saline minerality, bright acidity, and remarkable aging potential to the indigenous Turbiana (Trebbiano di Lugana) grape. Celebrations like the vintage tractor rally honour this living agricultural foundation, forming an organic complement to the ongoing Lake Garda grape harvest that defines autumn across the Benaco.
