Terre Rosse Vallania, two twenty-year-olds revive a historic brand

There is a winery in the Bologna hills that may be interesting to tell not only in itself, but also because it represents an emerging phenomenon: young people who are dedicated to the land without having specific family traditions in agriculture. A mixture of personal passion and acquired professional skills is made available for an entrepreneurial adventure. Usually the link with the fields is broken when a family moves from the countryside to the city, but it happens more and more often that young people take the opposite path. This is the case of Enrico Verdilio and Giulio Scagliarini: today they are 25 and 27 years old respectively, and they were almost kids when they took over and revitalized (with their first production in 2018) a historic winery that was in danger of dying. Success was quick even though they still consider themselves halfway there.

The company is called Terre Rosse Vallania, it is located in Zola Predosa (Bologna), it has existed since 1964 and produces a range of white and red wines, with bubbles or still, from the typical local Pignoletto to imported vines Sauvignon, Cabernet, Chardonnay and Merlot. At the peak of success, the Vallania family had extended the cultivation to 22 hectares and produced between 180 and 200 thousand bottles a year; the company was an oenological reference point for all the Bolognese hills, then the lack of heirs reduced the activity and risked bringing the cellar to extinction. Enrico and Giulio, who have taken over, currently produce 45,000 bottles on about ten hectares, but explain that “within ten years we want to go back to 22 hectares and go up to 150,000 bottles”, increasing the numbers without diluting the quality; the ambition is also to break through in America.

Enrico Verdilio is not without family roots in agriculture, but not in the vine and wine sector; his grandparents had an orchard, and it was there that he took his initiative, he says, “at the age of 16 I decided to create a vineyard”, doing everything by myself; so he acquired the necessary skills in the field. Instead, Giulio Scagliarini went to Bordeaux to study how the wine business is done; now each of the two takes care of everything, from production to marketing, but Enrico pays more attention to the first aspect and Giulio to the second. One can imagine that they were childhood friends or school mates and instead “we didn’t even know each other” they say, they came to know each other when, independently, they tried to sound out the old ownership to see how to take over; they thought that instead of competing it was better to set up a company, and thanks to a little money from their parents, and also public funding that was not lacking, they restarted the Terre Rosse Vallania winery. They say: “Of course agriculture is tiring, you have to keep up with nature, during the harvest you work 16 hours a day. But working outdoors is better than in the office and for this too there is a return to the fields”.

Pignoletto, which can be spumante, still or sparkling (something in between) is made with the classic method, while the French vines are aged in steel tanks. The various Sauvignons, Cabernets, etc. have a ready market while Pignoletto, says Giulio, “until recently was a bit snubbed as an exclusively local wine, while we are helping to enhance it. Our dream is to grow the wines of the Bologna hills to the level of fame that those of Tuscany and Piedmont have, but it will be a long road”.

Out of sheer curiosity, a couple of historic bottles were uncorked for this service, and we know that this is like playing the lottery: between two identical bottles, one can be excellent and the other to be thrown away. The experiment was perfectly successful with a 1982 Cabernet Sauvignon and also with a bottle of a special series labeled in 1989 for Silvio Berlusconi, who was a regular customer of the previous management.

At the recent “Vinitaly” the Vallania winery presented itself with the “Perditempo” line, which was appreciated by professional operators and customers and which includes:

Sparkling time wasters 2021 (Pignoletto)

White Time Waster 2021 (Chardonnay)

Red time wasters 2021 (Merlot)

Whites:

Vine Small Sauvignon blanc 2021

Zass Sauvignon Blanc 2018

Malago 2021 (Pignoletto)

995 Classic method sparkling wine 2020 (Pignoletto)

The Red:

Cabernet Sauvignon 2020