AWARD WINNING WINE

The Luigi Zanini wine growing history begins in the distant year 1964. His grat interest in discovering new wine growers and wine producer made him go travels trough Italy and France, regions with a heavy wine growing tradition. After setting up the Aristocracy of Italian Wines in Switzerland, in 1985 he had the idea of founding the Vinattieri Ticinesi.

The Vinattieri Ticinesi administers some 47 hectares (129 acres) of wine growing territory. In 1995, a garden dedicated to the grape vine was established, today harbouring more than 400 different types of vines. Luigi Zanini made his first wine in 1971. Then he stopped and prepared himself for resuming his wine growing activities in 1985. With his 20 years of specialized experience in wine growing and wine pressing, he then began the story of the Vinattieri together with his son Luigi Jr. Results showed soon to their great satisfaction.

In 1988 I bought a property situated in the town of Besazio (in the Ticino Canton) called Belvedere which inckuded an old farmhouse positioned right in the centre of the property and called Civasca.

The plot of land is located on the south-east side of the hill which from Rancate rises up the foot of the Mount San Giorgio in a natural basin in the form og an amphitheatre. It is listed in the wine growing land register in the Besazio town hall and has, thanks to its priviledged position towards the Lombard plain, to the ideal altitude, an excellent natural exposure which permits a perfect maturation of the grapes.It covered 43.000 sqms. of which 30.000 sqms. could have been for vineyards in that the undersoil was suitable for wine growing, being madeup of limestone, tuff and slightly sandy earth. The first planned intervention was that of carrying out a general cleaning of all the brambles and shrubs, I then planted the new vineyard: 2 hectares of which 90% for Merlot and 10% foe Chardonnay. On having obtained the necessary permits, in 1997 the old farmhouse was demolished to make space for the building Castello Luigi. I planned a helicoidal underground cellar, 18,5 metres deep, so that all the jobs in the cellar could be carried out by gravitation: from the wine-pressing to the decanting, up to the bottling, without the wine undergoing any type of traumatic mechanical intervention.