With summer on the way, it’s time to give some love to an emerging Italian summer red.
Light, ruby red, naturally low-alcohol and highly drinkable Bardolino—from the glacial hills near northern Italy’s Lake Garda—isn’t really a new wine.
But it’s a wine being rediscovered and reimagined by a new generation and key quality producers.
The good stuff—glistening on the palate with sour cherry notes, spice and tongue-pricking saltiness—is worthy of our attention among great warm-weather reds. Think of it as Italy’s cru Beaujolais.
Bardolino is the little cousin of the neighboring Valpolicella region’s wines (which include famed Amarone) and is made from the same grapes: a majority of Corvina, supported by local Molinara and Rondinella (and sometimes more tannic Corvinone). Non-local varieties, such as Merlot and Sangiovese, are also allowed to make up to 20 percent of the blend.
In a perverse twist, Bardolino’s reputation took a hit at the same time Italian wines underwent a renaissance in the 1990s. Just as Valpolicella area wines began booming, Bardolino became a cheap lakeside quaffer, along with its rosé version, Bardolino Chiaretto. Large Veneto cooperatives, wineries and bottlers were eager to sell lakes of wine to an increasing tourist trade. Growers went for maximum tonnage. And the rest is a sad cry-in-your-wineglass history.
“In the last 30 years, we lost the focus of making quality Bardolino,” says Stefano Rossi, 39, of Casaretti, whose family has been growing and bottling wines on the lakeside’s gentle hills for three generations. The winery currently makes 5,000 cases a year. “Now there’s a bit of a return by those who have the courage to make quality wines and to ask an adequate price for them.”
In recent years, Rossi, an enologist, has been experimenting with different methods, including Burgundy-inspired whole-cluster fermentation in conical oak casks for Casaretti’s La Rocca bottling.
Even the most carefully made Bardolino wines remain bargains. Stateside, few of them top $25 at retail. But what’s in the bottle is changing.
A new generation of grower-producers like Rossi has reduced vineyard yields, focused on old Corvina vineyards, and is experimenting to bring out the most in their wines.
They are also focusing on terroirs, as laid out in Bardolino’s 2018 division into three growing subzones: the lakefront La Rocca, with a mild, Mediterranean climate; cooler and rainier Montebaldo in the alpine foothills; and hotter, more continental Sommacampagna, in the southeastern part of the appellation.
Under the tutelage of Matilde Poggi, 62, president of the European Confederation of Independent Winegrowers and a leader in quality Bardolino with her Le Fraghe estate in the Montebaldo area, 10 producers have informally banded together in a group they call “Bardi.” Among the group are Rossi and other producers I visited during the 2024 harvest.
“We are all different, with different styles of winemaking,” says Daniele Delaini, 43, of 3,000-case-production Villa Calicantus in the La Rocca zone. “But we all share the idea of changing Bardolino from a tourist wine to a quality wine that is also age-worthy.”
Delaini worked in a Paris bank before returning to Lake Garda to revitalize the abandoned 19th-century winery and farm he inherited from his aunt in 2011. A self-taught winemaker, he is on Bardolino’s experimental edge.
He and and his wife, Chiara, farm biodynamically, and the Villa Calicantus wines are all fermented on indigenous yeasts, unfiltered, and barrel-aged. Each from specific vineyard plots, they are topped by his Avresir bottling (“riserva” spelled backwards, as Bardolino does not have the category).
“The idea is to put Bardolino back on the list of great wines of Italy, where they were until the end of the 1980s,” he says.
Nearby, at the modern, state-of-the-art, gravity-fed winery of Tenuta La Cà, brothers Pietro, 32, and Aldo Giambenini, 30, took over the 2,500-case estate bought by their parents nearly 20 years ago. From 2018 on, they decided to make organically grown wines rather than sell the grapes from their vineyards, which range from the Bardolino mix to international white and red varieties.
“We did a lot of experimentation and made a lot of mistakes,” says Pietro.
Whether they grow their grapes on traditional high pergola trellises or use Guyot cane pruning, quality producers emphasize attentive vineyard management as Corvina is susceptible to both sunburn and mold. They also pick ripe fruit for maximum phenolic complexity—with the advantage that Bardolino terroirs simply don’t produce high sugar levels.
“Even with climate change, it’s nearly impossible for us to reach 13.5 percent alcohol in our wines,” Pietro says.
In the higher altitude hills of Montebaldo, Enrico Gentili, 41, of Gentili (about 2,000 cases) teases complexity and elegance out of his wines by fermenting and aging some of his Bardolino and Chiaretto bottlings in stoneware amphorae.
“We are searching for the original concept of Bardolino: Elegance with no richness, but long aging,” he says. “For many people, wines with low alcohol and little color were considered cheap wines. We must change this.”
Change, he says, is easier with the support of a group of like-minded colleagues. “One of the worst things here is that people don’t drink the wines of other producers,” he says. “With Bardi, we drink each other’s wines and wines from all over the world to open our minds and understand the possibilities.”
Silvia Morando of Il Pignetto, which makes about 5,000 cases a year, is the youngest member of the group, at 24. A fourth-generation winemaker and enologist, she is in process of taking over the family estate in Sommacampagna.
“Bardolino needs a rejuvenation,” she says. “The others in the group are older than me, but they think young.”
“Young people are looking for fresher and lighter wines,” she adds. “Bardolino is perfect, but [young consumers] just don’t know about it.”
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