Garbole

A cult micro-estate of Venetian viticulture, Garbole sits on Via Fracanzana in Tregnago, on the hills of the Val d'Illasi, at the heart of Valpolicella. The estate was founded in the 1990s by the self-taught brothers Filippo and Ettore Finetto with a single ambition: to make the finest wine in the world.

Their "Winess Philosophy" comes down to a few principles: only nature and human work inside the bottle — people before wine, value before price, wine before label. Creative freedom, independence and a refusal to compromise are at the heart of the Garbole spirit.

On barely 6 hectares farmed as Guyot (4,500 to 5,500 vines/ha), yields are capped at 60 quintals. Harvests are entirely manual, spread over 35 to 40 days from mid-September, with severe selection of the finest bunches, then laid to dry in the fruttaio in wooden trays of 4 to 5 kg.

Every cuvée shares the same ageing: 36 months in new barrels followed by at least one year in bottle. Hurlo, Heletto, the Amarone Riserva Hatteso and the Recioto Hestremo have become collector cuvées, magnificent after fifteen or twenty years of cellaring. A rare address, a tiny production, and one of the most personal readings of the great contemporary Italian red.