Corte Capitelli: six vintages of volcanic Garganega

Conca d'Oro, Montebello Vicentino, May 2026

In the Conca d'Oro of Montebello Vicentino the landscape is not a backdrop: it is an amphitheatre of basalt that holds heat, water and salt, and gives them back in the wine. Here Corte Capitelli, a young winery, opened six vintages of its volcanic Garganega for us, from 2015 to 2020. Roberto Cipresso led the tasting with us.

A vertical usually tells a progression. Not this one: six vintages, one grape, six different ways of saying the same thing.

Six vintages

• 2015. Broad and luminous, the child of a hot, concentrated year. The salinity is already there, but integrated and soft.
• 2016. More introverted. The energy draws inward; it is a wine that asks for attention before it lets itself be read.
• 2017. The substance takes shape. The structure becomes precise, almost geometric, and tension becomes a language.
• 2018. The most generous vintage. Darker, spicier, slightly smoky notes.
• 2019. A slow ripening makes it more relaxed and expressive, without losing depth.
• 2020. It closes the cycle in balance: salinity and freshness in their place.

The conversation with cheese

Alongside the wines came cheeses from La Casara Roncolato, a historic artisan dairy in the Veronese Lessinia: goat cheeses, robiola, pecorino. The fresh ones amplified the Garganega's saline tension; the more aged ones stretched its depth. Milk and wine, after all, follow the same grammar: fermentation, time, transformation.

A young winery, a mature voice

Despite the winery's youth, one thread runs through every vintage: precision, tension, volcanic savouriness and a constant search for balance. There is no imitation of the past. Corte Capitelli is also part of Identità Basaltiche, the project uniting ten wineries between Gambellara and Montebello Vicentino.

Why it stays with you

• Time as the argument. Six vintages prove that volcanic Garganega does not have to be drunk young.
• Pairing as a way of reading. The cheeses did not accompany the wine: they questioned it.
• A guide who makes himself understood. With Roberto Cipresso the tasting was a story, not a lecture.

The rest of the territory is on our map: Volcanic Veneto, three territories of basalt and bubbles.