Longevity

We let the wine grow

In the modern world, where speed is of the essence, time has become one of life’s great luxuries. In Terlano it is a luxury we insist on. We take our time and give the wine time; every wine is given all the time it needs to mature to perfection – for years or even decades.

The Cantina Terlano winery has a traditional focus on long-living wines. White wines from Terlano in particular have repeatedly hit the headlines in trade publications with their ability to outlast the decades. The longevity of our wines is due to a combination of the high mineral content of the soils, old vines growing in complete harmony, carefully managed vineyards with low yields per vine, and the rigorous selection of heathy and fully mature grapes. Wine-making in Terlano traditionally involves the use of wooden barrels. Special emphasis is also placed on the “sur lie” method, with the wines often left to age on the yeast for years before being bottled and left to slowly mature to perfection. The slow maturation process gives the wines their specific character and complexity. The focus is on developing the complex secondary and tertiary aromas rather than the primary aromas. Proof of the benefits of this approach is to be found in the winery’s wine archive, which contains over 100,000 bottles in a collection of rarities comprising various vintages from 1955 to the present. Some of the wines actually date from 1893, the year the winery was founded.

Climate

We give our wines all the time they need to mature to absolute perfection: Every vine has different requirements depending on the variety, site and age. In Terlano we pay close attention to the natural biorhythms and invest up to 700 hours per hectare per year in manual work on what are often steep sites. That is the key to harmony in the vineyards. This harmony is replicated in the winery, where we give the wines years or even decades to reach their peak. This wealth of time is stored in a good bottle of wine. It deserves to be enjoyed in the same spirit.

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Territory

Born of fire: Terlano’s vineyards nestle like sun terraces in red porphyry rock of volcanic origins. The rock, a type of Bolzano quartz-porphyry, is composed of minerals like quartz and feldspar embedded in a fine-grained to glassy matrix. The soils lie on a mudflow debris fan comprised of the erosion products of the rock faces above. The topsoil contains a high proportion of coarse grains of silicious stone and sand. The skeletal character of the soil ensures that it warms up quickly. The relatively limited fine-grain fraction is mainly sandy to sandy loam.

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