Top 5 Italian master winemakers

With a passion for traditional, regional winemaking techniques, we round up Italy’s famous wine maestros passing the torch to the next generation of vintners.

Diegeo Planeta – PLANETA

Asked about the image of Sicilian wine when he became president of the Settesoli co-operative in 1971, Diego Planeta smiles: “May I say non-existent? Or is that too harsh?” He is probably right as, aside from a few names like Corvo and Regaleali, it was a sea of bulk wine. In the subsequent revolution, Planeta played a lead role, though he shrugs this off. However, he is proud of his achievements running Sicily’s Istituto Regionale della Vite e del Vino, as “a place we could develop the taste of ‘southern wine’”. It was also no mean feat to persuade Settesoli’s 2000 growers to pull together and resist the EU’s tempting distillation subsidies. It was an attempt to drain Europe’s wine lake, though instead it created a whole new market and pushed growers further from the real world of wines to drink.

Meanwhile Planeta established the family winery with a first release in 1995. “Planeta Chardonnay was the big bomb – it was such an international success and people were amazed that it came from Sicily,” he says, convinced that he could never have done it with indigenous grapes back then. “Today the concept of grape varieties looks a bit obsolete to me. Now it’s more and more about terroir and we have to move towards that, because we don’t want to become all ‘Australian’.” He has great faith in the new Sicilia DOC and the new generation of producers including those at Planeta – his nephew Alessio and daughter Francesca.

Aldo Vajra – GD VAJRA

While others were dreaming of revolution in 1968, young Aldo Vajra began looking after the family vineyards in Vergne, on the western fringe of Barolo, which had last been farmed by his grandparents. “When I took over it was a bit of a mess,” says Vajra. “My dream was to be a grower and just enjoy watching the growth of this wonderful plant, the vine.”

The dream wasn’t to last. “1972 was a difficult year. The grapes didn’t ripen and my clients wouldn’t buy them, so I decided I’d have to turn them into wine.” For those who love the purity of fruit and fragrance of Vajra’s Barolos, it was the best decision he ever took.

He won a confidence-boosting prize from the critic Luigi Veronelli and maybe this helped him survive “the hardest moment of my life” when freak hail storm shattered the vineyards in 1986. More important was the support from top Barolistas like Aldo Conterno. “Without them I wouldn’t be here,” says Vajra.

As a traditionalist, he ages his Barolo in barrel for three and a half years, and says: “Traditional wines are more elegant, with delicate perfumes, leaner, somewhat difficult… but offering more pleasure at the table.” Today he has 40 hectares planted, including 10 of Nebbiolo in such prized vineyards as Bricco dell Viole and Fossati. “Making wine is a beautiful thing, but it’s not a work of art,” says Vajra, “Sometimes I think I could be famous and sell my wines at €200 a bottle, but that’s not the right path.”

Renzo Cotarella – ANTINORI

Piero Antinori may be the front man in the famous wine dynasty, but it has long been a double act with Renzo Cotarella, chief winemaker and CEO. The two men met in Orvieto, when Antinori owned Bigi, and Cotarella joined the company in 1979. “At the time it was known as a historic company that was not so big, but starting to become famous because of Tignanello,” he recalls.

Once the company’s ownership had been wrestled back from Whitbread in 1992, Cotarella was put in charge of winemaking. “That’s when we really became a producer,” he says. “We left the Chianti Classico Consorzio in 2001 because at that time we couldn’t buy vineyards there.”

The company has since gone back to its roots with its striking new winery and HQ at San Casciano, but in the interim expanded from Puglia to Piedmont, and from California to Chile and beyond. Only most of the Tuscan wines, Umbria’s Castello della Sala and those from Napa Valley carry the family name. “We don’t want to take advantage of being Antinori,” says Cotarella. “I know it’s difficult to explain, but we want each company to have its own personality.”As to where he fits in the dynasty: “I’m part of the family, but I’m not, and sometimes it’s not so easy,” he says, yet it has never once been discussed in 35 years it’s clearly a pretty close relationship. And, on the same instinctive basis, there are no succession plans as Antinori’s three daughters gradually assume control.

Sandro Boscaini – MASI

When he started 50 years ago, “the Veneto was about large-scale production of anonymous wine for everyday drinking,” says Masi’s president, Sandro Boscaini. As for the wine that made his name, “Amarone was almost a rarity,” he explains. “It was made by no more than 10 producers and had a minuscule market with some sold here in the region, some in Switzerland and some to the few collectors in the US and the UK.”

Masi now controls 760ha in Italy and 70ha in Argentina, though his proudest achievement came early on in 1964 with the release of Campofiorin. “It opened the door to a whole new category of Venetian wines based on the ripasso method [fermenting Valpolicella with fermented Amarone skins] which gave them a touch of the old tradition,” he says. The wine certainly spawned a shoal of imitators which may have inadvertently diluted Valpolicella and Amarone. Some have been dubbed “baby Amarone”, an expression Boscaini deplores. Through all its work on appasimento, the group helped pioneer a modern, fresh style of Amarone in the 1980s, free of oxidation, yet full of personality and able to age.

Boscaini has also sought to be an ambassador for Venetian wines and promote the concept of a shared, “cultural terroir”. While it is a big player in the Veneto, Masi has yet to embrace Prosecco, “because I think it’s still at the level of a commodity,” says Boscaini. In the meantime he has high hopes for Vign’Asmara, Masi’s new Chardonnay/Gewürztraminer blend from Trentino.

Cristina Mariani-May – BANFI

“Although they’re regarded by some as interlopers, there’s no measuring the impact the Marianis had on Montalcino,” wrote Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch in Vino Italiano in 2005. Before the arrival of John and Harry Mariani of Banfi Vintners in 1978, the only significant outside investment had been when Francesco Cinzano bought Col d’Orcia five years earlier. Yet nothing, before or since, has matched the scale of the 7,000 acre Poggio alle Mura estate that was bought in two bites and rechristened Castello Banfi.

With Seagram’s building its global wine hub at Castello di Brolio in Chianti, some Tuscans feared an American takeover, and there were rumours the Mariani brothers and their consultant Ezio Rivella were bulldozing whole hillsides to replant the estate. But before long Banfi’s investment was attracting other outsiders like the Frescobaldis, the Antinoris and Angelo Gaja to stake their claim on Brunello.

John Mariani’s daughter Cristina Mariani-May gradually took over once Rivella retired in 1999 and she has built up the hospitality side of the business with a hotel, museum and Michelin- starred restaurant. Having survived the financial tsunami and Brunello scandal of 2008, she believes the wine is stronger than ever thanks to the stellar 2010 vintage. “We had some of the finest retailers calling us for the first time before we had released it and before they had even tasted it,” she says, determined that this time the buzz won’t fade.