Gini

Since 1980 at the same cellar

The decision to vinify rather than sell fruit sits close to Sandro Gini’s bench. Sandro Gini, winemaker at Gini in Monteforte d'Alpone, has worked the estate’s Soave Classico since 1980, holding the thread between vineyard, cellar and bottle with the patience of someone who knows the same slopes by repetition. His father’s line, “When my son becomes an enologist, I will stop selling grapes. We will vinify everything!”, gives the role its plainest origin: a family turning its own harvest into its own wine.

At Gini, that role is not separated from stewardship. Sandro is co-owner as well as winemaker, and he also serves as president of the Consorzio Tutela Vino Soave. The public position matters, but the work here remains grounded in the cellar and in Soave Classico, where Garganega asks for restraint, timing and close attention to site. La Froscà and Contrada Salvarenza Vecchie Vigne are the names most closely tied to his signature, wines that keep origin visible rather than dressed over. The estate’s family winemaking heritage reaches back more than 400 years, a span that would be easy to make decorative. Sandro’s work treats it as discipline.

Organic vineyards and volcanic tuff

Gini works organically across 25 hectares of vineyards, with a small to medium scale given as 16,500+ cases annually. The production range moves through Soave Classico and Valpolicella, with Garganega at the center and Corvina, Corvinone, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc also part of the estate language. The house makes still white, still red, sparkling and dessert wines, but the craft identity rests most clearly on the white wines of Soave Classico and the patient translation of hillside fruit.

The cellar is the defining piece of the place: an underground space carved entirely into volcanic tuff. That material is not scenery alone. It shapes the atmosphere of the barrel rooms and tasting areas, holding the wine work inside stone rather than above it.

Stone, quiet, and the cave tasting

The room moves at cellar pace. Gini’s guided tastings bring visitors below ground, into stone-lined spaces where the volcanic tuff carries the temperature and the mood. The setting is historic without needing to perform age; barrel rooms, tasting areas and local stone architecture do that work in silence. In a winery, quiet is not emptiness. It lets the pour, the glass, the cut of acidity and the memory of the vineyard come forward.

Monteforte d'Alpone gives the estate its hillside context, and the cellar gives that context a physical chamber. This is not a polished tasting room placed beside the craft. It is a tasting room inside the craft, close to the barrels and the rock. The atmosphere suits Sandro’s own sentence about nature and art: “All the great artists were inspired by how nature creates.” At Gini, that thought ends not as a slogan, but as Garganega in volcanic tuff.