Brigaldara

Appassimento under Stefano Cesari

Corvina rests for months before the press; Stefano Cesari, owner and winemaker at Brigaldara in San Pietro In Cariano, builds the estate’s Amarone from that pause. His work here is custodial and technical at once: he owns the property, makes the wine, and keeps Amarone della Valpolicella close to the house style. The Cesari family acquired Brigaldara in 1928–1929, taking on a property whose name appears in documents from 1260 and whose agricultural life had already passed through the Augustinian monastery of Sant’Eufemia in Verona. Cesari later served as president of the Consorzio della Valpolicella, a role that places his bench beyond one cellar and into the discipline of the appellation itself. At Brigaldara, that public work returns to private decisions: which parcels speak with enough clarity, how much extraction the fruit can bear, where Valpolicella Superiore sits beside Amarone rather than behind it. He has said, “I am convinced that Valpolicella Superiore is the wine of the future.” The sentence matters because it names a direction, not a campaign. It asks for line, freshness, and patience from a territory often measured by concentration.

Three zones, one Valpolicella grammar

Brigaldara works from about 120 hectares of property, with 48 planted to vines across Valpolicella Classica, Valpantena, and Eastern Valpolicella. The estate grows Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella, Oseleta, Molinara, Garganega, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and Sangiovese, using that range to make Amarone, Valpolicella, Soave, and dessert wine without letting the cellar lose its accent. The vineyards sit among olive groves, crops, pastures, and woods, a mosaic that gives the sustainability language here a material base. The method is Valpolicella’s long way. Grapes for Amarone dry for 3–4 months in fruit cellars before fermentation, concentrating skins, sugars, and aroma through time rather than force. The cellar then uses a double wood aging technique for Amarone and Recioto, moving between large oak casks and smaller barriques. Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG ages for a minimum of 2 years in barrique; Riserva ages for 4 years, and Case Vecie for 3 years. Valpolicella Superiore and Ripasso take shorter aging, typically 12–18 months, to keep the line clean and drinkable.

The cellar and the vineyard stay in conversation

The place reads as a working countryside estate rather than a stage set: vineyard, cellar, tasting room, agricultural land. In the vineyard, the soils shift from clayey-sandy textures to tuff, limestone-clay tufa, and stony layers high in limestone. In the cellar, those differences become practical questions of fermentation, maceration, and wood. Brigaldara’s stated style favors preserved aromatic profile over weight, with fruit, spice, and dried-fruit notes allowed to keep their edges. The room is conversational; the work is not hushed into performance. A guided tasting here can move through zones as much as bottles, because the estate treats Valpolicella as an anthology rather than a single sentence. Case Vecie gives that idea a name on the table, carrying Amarone della Valpolicella into one of Cesari’s most closely held signatures.