Bertani, Part 2

Angelini is a Tuscan-based wine company established in 1994.  We currently have several of their decent moderately priced wines in the store at this time.  Angelini is also the name of the Rome-based drug company (est. 1919) that bought into the wine business with their purchase in 1994.  They have grown comfortably since that beginning thirty years ago.

Bertani is a family-owned Veneto-based wine company that has been one of the best in the business for a couple hundred years.  In 2011 the family made the decision to sell 70% of their company to Angelini.  They retained the best seventy-three acres of Valpolicella Classico vineyards along with their fifty-four acres of Tenuta Santa Maria vineyards purchased in the 1850s.  Those blocks are still in family hands and constitute some of the best vineyard land in the region.

The backstory here is that the family feared global warming was going to wreck the quality of much of what they had.  They retained Classico vineyards at higher altitudes where they believed both the atmospheric heat and microbial life in the soils would remain consistent with historic norms.  The goal was to maintain the wine quality going back a hundred years.

So the Bertani labeled wines on store shelves now are made by Angelini although some Bertani family is involved considering they still hold a thirty percent interest in the Veneto operation.  The 123 acres retained by the Bertani family and the wines marketed under the Tenuta Santa Maria label continue as some of the best of the region.