Il Monte Caro Wines
If you’ve read a few of our winery descriptions on this website, a theme you’ll notice is the enormous love and care which winemakers across Valpolicella have for their land, and their deep and profound commitment to its conservation and its expression in the wine. The Marcolini family of Il Monte Caro are perhaps a particular example of this, having founded their winery based on falling in love with this particular hillside in Mezzane di Sotto in 1986, and having devoted themselves to its preservation, careful cultivation and capturing in the bottle ever since.
Today, along with their two sons, that devotion is expressed in the form of ‘natural’ or minimal-intervention winemaking, according to which the grapes are fermented exclusively with wild yeasts, are not filtered before going in the bottle, and have little-to-no added sulphites for stabilisaton.
The aim here is to express the unique geography (or ‘terroir’) which produced the wine, which for Monte Caro means their beautiful chalky-limestone soils, their advantageous elevation which enables them to escape the damp, sun-smothering valley fog, and the attendant climatic conditions which are everywhere in Valpolicella, the sun-exposure and the proximity to the cooling influence of Lake Garda.
A mere 7 hectares of vineyards are owned by Il Monte Caro, from which all the grapes are hand-selected, and around which biodiversity is encouraged to flourish, to keep the vines healthy and the wine fresh and pure. Love is in the air at Monte Caro, but also in the ground, in the grapes, and in the winery.
