Matteo Furlani is a 4th generation winemaker on his family’s 3 hectare plot 700m above Trento. Like many young winemakers, Matteo admits he never envisioned a future working with his family amongst his hometown vines,... Read More

Matteo Furlani is a 4th generation winemaker on his family’s 3 hectare plot 700m above Trento. Like many young winemakers, Matteo admits he never envisioned a future working with his family amongst his hometown vines, but it was a decision after college to carry on this 300 year farming tradition. While he learned the land and the demands of field labor from his father Fabio who worked his entire life cultivating grapes and apples, he also found business inspiration from his grandfather Lido’s tenure in the hospitality and catering industry.

After studying agronomy, Matteo set his sights on working his vines in the most natural of ways. Chemicals were never a part of what Matteo's predecessors used to tend the vines, yet Matteo took an even more rigorous approach, incorporating biodynamic preparations and methodologies in the vineyards today.

In the cellar, an equally non-intervention approach dominates. Wines are fermented either in cement tanks or small glass demijohns with no temperature control, only indigenous yeast and no added sulfur. To clarify the wines, they are often racked into demijohns during the winter and placed outside in the snow allowing the wine to naturally settle. The bubbles are made in a way called The "Metodo Interrotto'' or Interrupted Method or “Sur Lie Method”, which is something between a pet nat and champagne. Like Champagne, the juice is fermented twice, once in tank and once in the bottle. Instead of added sugar or yeast, frozen grape must from the initial pressing with all its intact native yeast, is thrown back in before it goes into the bottle where it ferments again to give it its bubbles.

The results are wines that are quite crystalline, but still with the texture and mouthfeel of keeping the lees in the bottle.