From: Veneto, Italy
Varietal: Garganega
Tasting Notes: The Soave Monteseroni di Filippi is presented in the glass with a straw yellow color with golden reflections; the nose has an almost retro allure, with elegant aromas of citrus fruits, ripe apples, and aromatic herbs from cold areas. Flavors of quince and fresh apricots meet a savory dimension to the wine on the palate, which finishes long and with great vitality.
Pairing: The winery suggests pairing this wine with rich shellfish, coconut-based mild curries, or herbed grilled chicken.
About. Filippo Filippi's wines capture in-bottle the unadulterated expression of his family's land, special parcels planted to ancient Garganega vines. His home and cantina in Castelcerino sit at the summit of Monte Calprea, an ancient volcano, one of many that make up Soave's highest peaks and its most treasured vineyard soils. It is a secluded spot, with some 59 acres of vineyards surrounded by an equal surface of wild forest, rich in its biodiversity–a crrsteof Filippi's biodynamic philosophy.
The Filippi family has a longstanding relationship with their historic property in the Colli Scaligeri as it is since 1300 they have settled here, formally beginning wine production around 1900. Towering above the valley just fifteen kilometers east of Verona at 400 meters above sea level, Filippo Filippi is the current family member/proprietor of the domain who cares for the secluded vineyards and woodlands that comprise this tranquil place. He is very much a lone wolf in the way that he goes about expressing the distinctive terroir of this land, opting to make wines that embody principles of organic certification, old vines, and low yields in a region that reports some of Italy’s most sizable and unmemorable wine production. For this, Filippo strives to make wines that identify more with the terrain rather than DOC Soave.
Filippi’s well-ventilated vineyards vary considerably in composition, including soils of basalt, limestone, sand, and clay in the property’s five parcels: Castelcerino, Vigna della Brà, Monteseroni, Turbiana, and Calprea. Here he cultivates mainly the indigenous Garganega variety in addition to small amounts of Trebbiano, Chardonnay, and Merlot. The scarce quantity of Amarone produced by Cantina Filippi—only in good vintages—hails from half a hectare vineyard in Valpolicella that Filippo rents and cultivates. In many of the region’s surrounding vineyards, pergola-trained vines are not an uncommon sight. Filippo has introduced Guyot in some of his sites, nodding instead to Burgundy as a way of experimenting outside the local tradition. In the same way, the vinification room is outfitted with some winemaking advancements such as gravity-fed/temperature-controlled stainless steel vats, although it maintains some old-world aspects as well. The small aging room in which the wooden casks are held, for example, is characterized by its appreciably thick walls made of stone, allowing for the wines to experience natural temperature shifts throughout the year rather than modern climate control. The result is Filippi’s vision that embraces minimal technology in the vineyard and cellar to produce wines of typicity and character with results that far exceed his peers.
The estate vines that produced the Garganega used to make this wine sit at 1050 feet in altitude, next to an ancient oak forest, facing south. This is the winery's warmest vineyard site, and the 70-80 year-old vines here are low-yielding and trained in pergola. The soils are chalky limestone. 'Monteseroni' is also the name of the mountain; in the local dialect, it means "the mountain of wild roosters."
