Azienda Agricola Montezovo, Italy

Montezovo wine estate, owned by the Cottini Family, places most of their business focus on managing terroir and biodiversity. Montezovo wines are the result of careful and conscious choices in the vineyards, where the interaction between the vine’s varietal, soil, climate and geographic position are all carefully considered. Most of the vineyards are located over 550m above sea level with some beyond 900m which form an average altitude much higher than the appellation usually sees and they see clear benefits for both vines and grapes. Montezovo wines are produced entirely with grapes from the family-owned vineyards, spread over the main Verona appellations: Valpolicella, Garda, Lugana and Lessini. Each wine is the expression of the identity of the vineyard and the result of the never-ending research for innovation and sustainability, the results of this incredible terroir are the flagship wines of Montezovo: Calinverno Rosso Veronese and Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG.

Viticulture

Since their inception, the Cottini family is committed to ensuring the well-being of the territories in which that they operate in and the people that involved, as well as with producing high quality wines through the adoption of sustainable practices in the vineyard and in the winery. By issuing the first "Best Practices Report" of Montezovo they are transparent about their sustainable management system by providing an overview of their activities, with the aim to promote good practice and collect suggestions to further improve the quality of their work. Even before becoming an organic company, in spring of 2013 the winery were awarded the "Biodiversity Friend" certification, a private standard developed to evaluate the conservation of biodiversity in agriculture. From August 2018 the vineyards have produced certified organic grapes. In addition to this, Montezovo has decided to adopt the National Quality System of Integrated Production, a production system aimed to reduce to the minimum the impact they have on the environment and on the consumer’s health. Since 2023 Montezovo is certified Equalitas, the standard focuses on the social, environmental and economic pillars of sustainability.

Winemaking

Since 2010, one of the company’s distinguishing features has been the technological system for covering the winery’s energy needs based on a biomass generator coupled with an absorption refrigerator and a series of intelligent technological solutions to minimize energy consumption. This system minimises consumption and optimizes production processes by using vineyard pruning waste and saves as much as 500,000 kg of CO2 each year using exclusively 100% renewable energy sources. The in-house photovoltaic system has a capacity of 115,000 kWh/year, and through investment in new photovoltaic systems, the energy produced from renewable sources will increase to 660,000 kWh/year.