Dinavolino 2022

As La Stoppa's winemaker since 1980, Giulio Armani helped make the estate a reference for Italian natural wine. At Denavolo, his personal project founded in 2005, he treats white grapes as if they were red, making amber, textured wines from the limestone hills of the Colli Piacentini.

Denavolo sits on the slopes of Monte Denavolo, which gives the estate its name. It is near the village of Travo in the Val Trebbia, in the hills south of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna. The vineyards are high, cool and breezy, far from the summer heat of the Po plain. These conditions keep the acidity in white grapes.

Giulio was born just a few kilometres from La Stoppa, and his parents came from near Denavolo. After decades at La Stoppa, he wanted a place of his own in the hills of his family. He was looking for an old stone house and instead found a large property with land at a good price. He started by planting a single hectare, then slowly grew the estate to about eight hectares of vines.

The vineyards grow Malvasia di Candia Aromatica, Marsanne and Ortrugo, along with Trebbiano, Sauvignon Blanc, the rare local Santa Maria and some old, unidentified varieties. They are farmed without any synthetic chemicals. Giulio also grows six hectares of heritage wheat, which is milled locally into flour and pasta.

In the cellar, Giulio asks why white wines should be made differently from reds. The grapes ferment with their skins, using wild yeasts and no temperature control. The wines rest on their lees through the winter and are not racked until spring or later. They age in stainless steel with nothing added. Skin contact runs from about six days for Catavela to around six months for Dinavolo. In his words, the goal is "to understand where we work… and produce a wine that expresses this terroir."

A quiet, thoughtful winemaker, Giulio Armani has made Denavolo one of the great references for skin-contact white wine!