Claudia Benazzoli

The Place Benazzoli is a family-run estate in Pastrengo, where Claudia and Giulia have guided the work together since 2006. The sisters’ range sits across Bardolino and Chiaretto, while the estate also works with Valpolicella and Bardolino, giving their cellar a vocabulary of fresh Lake Garda wines and longer-aged reds. A fourth-generation sense of inheritance runs through Claudia’s own words: "We are the fourth generation, yes. My great-grandfather started with the business, so many, many years ago. Now I am running the estate together with my sister Giulia. We are two women involved in this wine business." That lineage is not treated as a museum piece. At the estate, the sisters bring a new and international approach to winemaking while keeping local family traditions close, a balance that places the bottles between inherited practice and contemporary clarity.

The Method Oenology is the craft at the center of Claudia’s work. The cellar approach is clean and precise: gentle crushing, controlled fermentations, and a separation between fresh steel-led Lake Garda wines and longer-aged Valpolicella reds. Those choices matter in the glass because they protect different kinds of character. Steel-led wines can hold freshness and directness, while the Valpolicella reds are handled for longer aging, giving each part of the range its own pace rather than forcing one method across every bottle. The sisters describe the secret of their wine as curiosity, discovery, love, and respect for traditions, land, products, and people. Claudia puts that interior work plainly: "The secret of our wine lies hidden beneath the label. The work that has come before and that has to do with curiosity, discovery and love." Her language returns the wine to what happens before a label is read: the choices in the cellar, the attention to place, and the discipline of carrying family practice without freezing it in place.

The Range Bardolino and Chiaretto are central to Benazzoli’s identity. The estate’s work with Valpolicella and Bardolino gives Claudia and Giulia a range that can move from freshness to deeper red-wine aging without leaving the local frame of their production. One named release shows the detail of that style: ‘Dafne’ Bardolino DOC 2024. It is described as vibrant ruby red, fresh, savory, and softly tannic, with aromas of red rose, geranium, ripe red cherry, wild strawberry, black pepper, and balsamic notes. That bottle reads like a compact statement of the estate’s method: color, freshness, savory grip, and aromatic lift held together without heaviness. Its floral notes sit beside red fruit and spice, while the soft tannins keep the wine grounded rather than glossy. Claudia also connects the sisters’ work to how the wines are presented and shared. "I think that women can, like in the packaging we can give something more like … We pay more attention in the style, in the packaging, how we promote our wines, how we make it."