Photo courtesy Monte Dall' Ora
Monte Dall' Ora grapes
The vicoli and piazzali were surging with people in costumes and masks. The caneletti were swelling with gondole and vaporetti. The Piazza San Marco felt as if it couldn't possibly hold one more body. Moody clouds were pouring rain on us. Joyful music was ringing across the piazza. All of us were dancing. It was the evening of Shrove Tuesday at the Carnival of Venice.
As evening began turning to night, I began walking around the city. What was I looking for? I couldn't tell you. A party I was invited to? Maybe.
I saw a passel of people in costumes by the portone of a Venetian Gothic palazzo. I sidled up behind them. “We were invited!” shouted one of them to the other side of the enormous front door. The door swung open. The passel bundled out of the rain and into the palazzo. I bundled in after them, leaving one magical world to find myself in another.
A world of grand staircases, intimate salotti and loggie with pillars. With more music, more dancing, more costumes and masks. And with bottles and bottles of delicious red wine. A wine bathed in light but whispering darkly. Like a meadow of flowers under swirling summer skies. Like the garnet lips of a Delphic smile, whose breath pulls you closer and closer for more.
“What kind of wine is this?” I asked a Venetian with the bearing of a Renaissance courtier.
“Valpolicella Classico,” said the Venetian. “A wine of our region, the Veneto.”
“It’s delicious,” I said.
“No,” the Venetian smiled at me. “It’s much more than that.”
Monte dall’Ora, Valpolicella Classico, “Saseti” isn’t the Valpolicella Classico I drank at that party I wasn’t invited to, but it bears all of that wine’s qualities. These are honest wines from the Veneto, made by their land, their climate, their people and their culture.
“Monte dall’Ora was born out of a dream,” says Carlo Venturini, who with his wife, Alessandra Zantedeschi, are the owners and vignaioli of the Veneto estate. The dream was making wine out of nature “without forcing it in any way.”
Indigenous Grapes
Monte Dall' Ora wine bottles
Carlo and Alessandra practice biodynamic agriculture, and they cultivate grapes native to the Veneto—grapes like Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Molinari, along with grapes like Oseleta, an indigenous grape that was lost to the region. They believe cultivating grapes is about the biodiversity of their vineyards, a quality which powers the energy of their agriculture. Cherry and olive trees grow among their vines. Wild grasses carpet their vineyards. “Agriculture is a practice with a deep spiritual impact,” says Carlo. “It’s an act that requires our faith in our land.” These practices and acts yield Monte dall’Ora’s honest wines.
“I found an energy and integrity in them that was lacking in most other Valpolicella and Amarone wines,” recalls Monte dall'Ora’s importer Kevin McKenna, a partner at Louis/Dressner Selections, whose portfolio is composed of honest wines, made in vineyards and with a true sense of grape and place. (Louis/Dressner also imports the super delicious white Veneto wines of Angelino Maule at an estate called La Biancara.) “I was also very enamored of the way Carlo worked the vineyards and his work in the cellar.”
The 2021 Monte dall’Ora Valpolicella Classico “Saseti” is a blend of Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella, Molinara and Oseleta. “Saseti” is named for the little stones found in the limestone soils of the wine’s terraced vineyard. Monte dall’Ora ferments the grapes of “Saseti” spontaneously with their native yeasts in concrete and steel tanks. The wine is aged in its tanks for about three months, then bottled unfiltered.
The label of “Saseti” features the wine-colored handprints of Carlo, Alessandra and their three children.
A superscript to the handprints reads, “Oltre al cuore, solo queste.” “Along with our hearts, just these.”
“We don’t want to just make wine. We want to make ‘our’ wine,” says Carlo. “Our natural wines are the fruits of our feelings about our land and our work.”
No, this wine isn’t delicious. It’s much more than that.
Monte dall’Ora, Valpolicella Classico, “Saseti” costs about $20 per bottle. It is imported by Louis/Dressner Selections and is distributed locally by Vino Veritas, Ltd. It can be purchased at better independent wine shops.
