Giovanni Menti and Marcobarba and Garganuda - Gambellara, Italy
Young grapes at Menti!
DOCG: DEPARTMENT OF COOL GUYS -
AGRICOLA GIOVANNI MENTI
MARCOBARBA
GARGANUDA
Garganega has charisma. Garganega is a friend to take on a walk so the brightness of its perspective animates every corner. Sitting still with Garganega is nearly impossible, the nerviness of its storytelling makes you want to get up and do something, drive, work, confess love, make enemies, grow flowers, sing, drink again. Garganega gets people to talk, gets secrets out of the shy and laughter out of grumps.
Stefano Menti in Gambellara is one of the few in the world who can match the lively stride of the garganega grape. His work and belief in garganega’s excellence reveal the grape’s spitfire charisma — more careless winemakers simply mask it. Humbly, Stefano would tell you, this has everything to do with his beloved village of Gambellara.
Gambellara is the road not taken. It’s small and remote: a region which plays not second, but third fiddle to next door neighbor Soave (map below, tiny yellow section next to Soave). While Soave has not exactly made the best name for itself, it produces a number of terrific wines. Pocket-sized Gambellara has much in its favor, particularly with respect to the more well known wines from Soave. The two regions are among the only in the world where Garganega is grown.
The differences between the regions are glacial. Gambellara's surface area is one square mile; one square mile of planet earth in which one grape- Garganega- reigns supreme. By comparison Soave encompasses an area ten+ times larger, including the quadrupling of its original boundaries to include significant vineyards on the flat plains of the Veneto. The following photo shows the volcanic, vine-covered "cone" housing Gambellara's vines. The Menti home and winery is just above and left of the small church with steeple in the center of the photo.
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More significantly, unlike Soave, all of horseshoe-shaped Gambellara is hilly; 90% is composed of volcanic soil, while nearly half of Soave is limestone-based. As opposed to the fruitier wines from Soave's sedimentary seabed-meshed ground, Gambellara's basalt-rich soil produces mineral-edged, tightly structured wine with stony perfumes. Lastly, little Gambellara has a known history going back farther than Soave. I asked Stefano about this-
"I don't know if wines were made in Gambellara before Soave but what I know by the history of this area, is there is much more information about Gambellara centuries ago than Soave. It seems Soave's hills were cultivated not only with grapes but also wheat and peas while Gambellara was famous only for grapes and wine. In fact the Soave vineyards were recently (50-60 years ago) rebuilt and Gambellara vineyards are still very old."
Garganega, the kingpin grape of the two regions, can produce fine whites of complexity bursting with crystalline energy and surprising aging potential. Like most aspects of "better" wines, person and place are at the core. In this case Gambellara's DOC wines are 100% Garganega, and while Soave requires 70% Garganega, it allows up to 30% "other grapes" normally including Chardonnay and Trebbiano. Stefano pointed out that Gambellara's Garganega is remarkably versatile and produces "fresh fruity wines, long aging whites, orange wines, sweet wines and sparkling too". The whole region is DOC, while the supremely fabulous Recioto wines of Gambellara can be DOCG.
Stefano is the fourth generation of his family to be growing and making wine in Gambellara, and never has it been a more urgent or thrilling time in the region. Over the years since E&R first started bringing the wines to the US under our Almost-Direct-Imports program, Stefano’s wines have grown to reach a wider audience. His commitment to natural winemaking and biodynamic farming have become pressing issues to more wine drinkers, and thus, more wine growers.
Menti is wine volutamente declassato: wine deliberated/voluntarily declassified/downgraded. Although the wines do not have a DOC/DOCG listed on the label, all of the vineyards are within areas wherein they could be. Radically, Stefano broke with the labelling system in the year 2012. Stefano's got a cool t-shirt that says vino volutamente declassato.
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Reflecting on the slogan in 2019 (around 7 vintages after taking it on), Stefano remarks that he no longer needs to be as brash about it, but the intentions behind it are more important than ever. Stefano took over the family estate after his father who was farming using chemical adjuncts both in the cellar and the vineyards. He knew he could make his wine better if he made it in the way his grandfather did then, more in line with the deep history of Gambellara, deeper than DOCGs and borderlines.
Importantly, for Stefano and others, the labelling of the DOC no longer guarantees quality in the wine. He and others like him believe that this system is dated. For instance, Stefano believes that the kind of high yields the Soave DOC/G dictates simply cannot be supported by any kind of reasonable farming practices. In Stefano’s biodynamic farming, his yields are much lower, but the net effect on the soil is much less.
Stefano has grouped around him his own DOCG, that is, Department Of Cool Guys. Since his clash with the institution at the start of his winemaking career, Stefano has become a leader, consultant, and mentor to other winemakers in his region and beyond.
INTRODUCING GARGANUDA AND MARCOBARBA
Two of the producers sharing in the Menti space and philosophy are Garganuda and Marcobarba. We are thrilled to be able to introduce these wines to you in Oregon — wines (while available) listed below.
Garganuda is Andrea Fiorini Carbognin’s project in Soave and Valpolicella. Importantly, Andrea is Stefano’s brother in law. As wine is a family affair at Menti, he has helped at the winery for many years. Through this work, he was able to find small parcels of vineyards that he could transition to biodynamic farming. Stefano is guiding Andrea through this work. Like all of the Menti vineyards, Garganuda is farmed without chemicals and is on volcanic soil. During our recent visit in May 2019, Stefano took us to the Vigna Garganuda vineyard. The trellised vineyard is populated by a meandering flock of sheep, whose grazing mows between the rows without compression to the soil.
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The Menti and Garganuda vineyards teem with life and vibrancy — the experiments with animal farming along with biodynamic techniques have noticeably improved the health of the vineyard. Stefano remarks that within the first year of farming this way that they saw better results.
In the year 2015, a young man named Marco from Madonna di Lonigo, a bit south of Gambellara, started working for Stefano. He came from an internship in Switzerland learning to raise sheep in a biodynamic manner, and brought this expertise back home to the Veneto. Marco’s label is called Marcobarba and he also makes his wines out of the Menti facility. The name of his project is in homage to his previous work as a sheep farmer -- barba means sheep. The vineyards he is sourcing fruit from belong to old ladies in the village and some of them are over 100 years old!
In Stefano’s case, the passion for winemaking is synonymous with the passion for education and socially-drive change. The weather is becoming more and more unpredictable in Gambellara (and in the world as a whole) and the old ways they have had for farming grapes are less effective. Nature has posed its own kind of urgency for innovation and around that urgency a community has gathered.
The core of the Menti, Marcobarba, and Garganuda wines is the garganega grape. Amongst the three, there are numerous expressions of the grape, from sparkling wine, to still wine, to orange wine, to dessert wine. We encourage you to check out the brilliant range of expressions of Garganega. All of the wines are fermented with native yeast, unfined, unfiltered, and with no to minimal sulfur. As noted, all of the wine is made from biodynamically farmed vineyards.
GIOVANNI MENTI - VINO VOLUTAMENTE DECLASSATO
"Many people think that to be a farmer in Gambellara is a curse. I can see that wine lovers love more Gambellara than Soave, maybe as Verdicchio di Matelica with Jesi, Barbaresco with Barolo, and Armagnac with Cognac."
- STEFANO MENTI
When in stock, wines from these producers appear below. Click on each wine for more detail.