— With a Couple Important End Notes
On the Costaripa winery website there are sections devoted to the philosophy of rosé wine and the value of manual skills in winemaking. Owner Mattia Vezzola, who recently celebrated 50 years of winemaking, calls his rosés “an antidote to the banality and complications of everyday life.” In other words, these are wines which have been hand-crafted to help us relax, enjoy, and forget our daily cares.
Mattia is fortunate to live in a small town in the north of Italy, on the “sunrise” side of beautiful Lake Garda, and it seems we can all benefit from the wonders of the place where he makes his wines.
Mattia’s namesake grandfather started growing grapes in the area in 1936, after working in the wine business for a number of years. Having developed a passion for rosé wines, grandfather Mattia Vezzola pioneered rosé production there – in the Valtenèsi region of Lombardy, with the Lake Garda-influenced mild climate.
Recently, I tasted several of Mattia’s still rosés and sparkling wines. I was amazed at the depth and development of the wines as they matured over the years, and how they blossomed in the glass.
ROSÉ
Rosé wines in this Valtenèsi district can only be made with red grapes. Mattia favors using at least 50% of the ancient, indigenous gropello gentile grape, adding marzemino, sangiovese and barbera to round out the blend. The grapes are hand harvested, and they see varying amounts of oak, depending on the wine. The results are rosé wines that age well for a startlingly long time, developing in the bottle for five or six years; the winery sent me both a 2023 RosaMaria and a 2019 Molmenti rosé to try. 2019 also happens to be the year Molmenti (the 2015 vintage) was named best Italian rosé by the prestigious Gambero Rosso guide.
The 2023 Costaripa RosaMaria Valtènesi rosé is named after Mattia’s mother and aunt, and is so popular it generally sells out by October or November in the year following the harvest. This vintage is blended from the wines of 28 parcels, produced with the saignée method, and aged in older oak barrels for about six months, which Mattia says contributes to the wine’s ageing potential (if there was any left, of course). The wine has delicate notes of apricot, mango and peach skin in the aromas. On the palate it is smooth, bright and fresh, with a host of delicate fruit flavors continuing into a long finish.
The 2019 Costaripa Molmenti Valtènesi rosé was an eye-opening experience for me: an aged rosé. The wine was bottled two years after harvest, instead of the following year like most rosés. Aged in large oak for 24 months, it is then held in bottle for a further three years before being released on the market. When poured, it continued to develop in the glass over the course of 30 minutes. It opens like a zingy white wine, and finishes like a red wine. The plethora of floral and fruit from white flowers and honey to fresh fruits and dates are apparent in the aromas and also transition onto the palate. The end-palate and finish show oak-influenced spices and structure.
CLASSIC SPARKLING
But Mattia was not always simply the winemaker for his family’s enterprise. He recently retired as winemaker for one of finest Franciacorta sparkling wineries, Bellavista. There, he produced excellent traditional-method sparkling wines, having fallen in love with Champagne when he visited there as a young man in the 1970s. Now Mattia also produces high quality metodo classico [traditional method] sparkling wines at the family’s Costaripa winery, with chardonnay and pinot noir grapes that are hand-harvested. The bottles are hand-riddled instead of turned on a preset schedule in a machine, which, he explains, allows him more control over every single bottle.
Fifty-five percent of his sparkling wine is rosé. The NV Mattia Vezzola Rosé metodo classico is made with 80% chardonnay and 20% pinot noir, spending three years on the yeast, with about a third of the wine aged in oak. The wine is fresh and salmon-colored, with red berries in the aromas and flavors, and a textured mouthfeel that veers toward the savory; it finishes dry with a citric tinge.
The 2018 Mattia Vezzola Grande Annato Rosé metodo classico celebrates Mattia Vezzola’s 50 years of winemaking. Now, in 2024, it takes a while to fully open in the glass, which is an unusual treat when it comes to sparkling wine. Made with 80% chardonnay and 20% pinot noir, the wine is an apricot color with fine bubbles. Ripe red berries and a floral hint appear in the aroma, and morph into citrus fruit on the palate and in the finish. The wine is very dry, with no dosage added, though that fact is not called out on the label. This vintage is a top Lombardy wine in the 2025 Gambero Rosso guide.
LABELS AND CHARITY
- LANGUAGE, LABELS AND STYLE
It’s common for Italian winemaking families to name their winery and/or their wines after a founder; the “Mattia Vezzola” on Costaripa’s labels honors the founding grandfather.
Oh, and another language note: the Costaripa rosé wines are not called chiaretto because that term is identified with another Lake Garda region, Bardolino. And though rosato is an Italian word for rosé, Costaripa believes rosato is more identified with wines produced in the south of Italy. Also, importantly, Costaripa has formed a partnership with the French region of Provence, to study rosé wine.
- HEARTS FOR CHILDREN
Along the way, the Vezzola family formed an association with famed South African surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard who was the first to perform a successful heart transplant. About 25 years ago, they began contributing proceeds from their wine to a foundation to benefit children, created by Princess Diana, according to the website: “In 2000 the ‘Christiaan Barnard Foundation’ wine was produced, thanks to which two children under the age of 3 received a new ‘heart’. Today this wine bears the name Campostarne.” It is a (heart-healthy) red wine made with the same grapes as Mattia’s award-winning rosé: groppello gentile, marzemino, sangiovese and barbera