Azienda Mondò

Merlot first, above the Magadino plain

A Merlot selected by Sacha Pelossi, winemaker at Azienda Mondò in Sementina, carries the work of two Ticino houses into one bottle. The 2023 Ticino, Sacha & Giorgio, Merlot, Our Winemaker Selection joins Pelossi’s own long attention to the grape with Mondò’s hillside fruit, and it says enough without ornament: 100% Merlot, black fruit, chocolate, sweet spice, soft tannins, a finish held in balance. Pelossi’s route to that kind of wine began with garage wines in his parents’ house in Pazzallo. He trained at Changins-Nyon in 1993, founded his winery in 1987, and reached a first bottled marker in 1995 with 500 bottles of Merlot. At Mondò, the named work is collaborative rather than inherited; the estate belongs to the Rossi family’s Sementina line, while Pelossi’s presence here is as a winemaker whose own discipline has stayed close to Ticino Merlot. The point is not a borrowed signature. It is a shared vocabulary: place, grape, structure, and restraint.

Thirty plots, little room for machines

The vineyard work at Azienda Mondò begins on steep ground. Giorgio Rossi and Andrea Rossi manage about 6.5 to 7 hectares across 30 hillside plots between Bellinzona and Locarno, at elevations from 220 to 320 meters above sea level. The terrain limits mechanization, so the hands return to the vines often, plot by plot, row by row. Mondò works by Integrated Production directives, with non-intensive cultivation, resource conservation, and close attention to the right bank of the Ticino river. Merlot sits at the center, as it does across much of Ticino, but the estate also keeps Bondola in the program. That matters. Bondola predates the great Merlot era here; it brings high acidity, low alcohol, and a cherry-like register suited to nostrano table wine. Mondò makes both red and rosé from Bondola, placing the grape beside Cabernet Sauvignon, Arinarnoa, Chardonnay, Iris, and other Ticino whites rather than leaving it as a relic. In Ronco dei Ciliegi Riserva, the estate folds Cabernet Sauvignon into Merlot, including a 2018 bottling with 9% Cabernet Sauvignon in 150cl format. The cellar does not need a loud method when the slope has already set the terms.

The cellar keeps its family scale

The tasting room and cellar sit above Sementina with the Magadino plain below, but the view is not the craft. The work is in the terraced ronchi, the separated parcels, the quiet arithmetic of ripeness and acidity on ground that asks for walking rather than driving. Mondò’s scale stays family-run, with a rustic stillness that suits the wines: guided tastings, local products at the table, and bottles that move between red, white, rosé, and dessert without turning the house into a catalogue. The preservation of Bondola gives the place its sharper outline. Merlot may be the fluent language of Ticino, but Bondola is the older dialect still spoken here, and the cellar keeps making room for it.

A grandfather’s ronco in the glass

Ronco dei Ciliegi Riserva gives Mondò its most concrete statement of lineage, tied to the steep terraced slope of the grandfather’s ronco in Sementina. The 2018 wine is dark in color, built on ripe fruit, floral notes, spice, coffee, and roasted tones, with a drinking window stated as +3 to +11 years from vintage. If the next measure is patience, it belongs in that bottle: Ronco dei Ciliegi Riserva 2018.