Bardolino

Contrary to what one might assume, Bardolino is a region capable of producing highly elegant and profound wines.

The natural conditions are fundamentally ideal. The region’s moraine soils provide good drainage and allow roots to penetrate deeply, while also being remarkably heterogeneous – often interspersed with sand, and occasionally with gravel, limestone or clay.

Climatically, Lake Garda naturally calls the shots. It acts as a huge thermal buffer, keeping temperatures relatively mild in winter, while summers are warm but rarely excessively hot. In the north of the region, Monte Baldo also has a major influence on both the climate and geology. In general, it is another notch cooler there, and the soils are rockier than elsewhere in the region – so, all in all, pretty much perfect.

The Human Factor

The reason why truly great wines from Bardolino are nevertheless often hard to come by has a lot to do with the human factor. On the one hand, there are the tourists who, simply delighted to be at the lake, will happily drink almost anything put in front of them; on the other, there are the restaurateurs and winemakers who are well aware of this and take full advantage of it. Although things were certainly worse in the past. From the 1960s through to the 1980s, production was all about quantity. Yields of 10,000 kilos of grapes or more per hectare were not uncommon. Organic farming was barely on anyone’s radar. While we cannot speak from personal experience, there was presumably little of genuinely good quality among all those wines.

From the 1990s onwards, attempts were made to change the style, producing opulent, powerful, oak-aged wines. But firstly, wines of this kind rarely make for much fun, and secondly, the Bardolino terroir is simply not particularly suited to them.

At least the region avoided being planted over with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, so today there is still plenty of good native vine material to work with. Most of it, as in neighbouring Valpolicella, consists of Corvina, supplemented by Rondinella and Molinara.

A Lone Voice

The potential inherent in these grapes – and in Bardolino as a whole – is demonstrated above all by the biodynamic estate Villa Calicantus. Although, for good reason, it is no longer represented in the region’s consortium, it is a textbook example of what Bardolino should be.

Even the entry-level wine is more than just enjoyable. Soracuna comes from 50-year-old vines trained in the pergola system and is aged in concrete vats, offering complexity and finesse. Chiar’otto is quite magnificent. A variation on the name Chiar’etto, it is consequently a Rosato, a style of wine for which Bardolino – normally, and quite unjustifiably – enjoys a certain reputation. Here too, Calicantus sets the benchmark.

With Lassuperiora and, above all, Avresir, the estate ultimately explores what might be possible if this inherently excellent terroir were interpreted in a way that truly did it justice.