“What is inside a bottle of my wine?
The story of a family, the respect for a territory, a great passion…and everything else”.
Pietro Arditi in a picture taken by Stefano Caffarri
The estate, founded in 1898, is within a Piedmontese farmhouse of the 1700s, a building whose traces date back to the 1300s
The area in which it stands is an intact "core zone" of the Piedmont wine landscapes (UNESCO World Heritage), in the site called "Il Monferrato e gli Infernot"*.
(*) From Wikipedia: "With the Piedmontese term Infernòt we indicate an underground room built by digging out by hand a particular sandstone rock, the canton stone, or tuff, and that was usually used as a cellar or pantry".
- Link to the UNESCO card
- Link to the Wine Tourism Movement itinerary (Movimento Turismo del Vino)
The agricultural estate covers over 30 hectares, of which 10 are vineyards, at an altitude of 265 meters above sea level.
The vines, trained with the short-spurred cordon system and guyot, with a density of 4,500 vines/hectare, date back to the years 2000 and 2005. They were planted by partially recovering and through massal selection of the previous vineyards, which dated back to the 30s.
Pietro Arditi considers himself a "vignéron indépendant", aware of the many faces of Valpane’s nature.
He cares about conveying his values to those who visit the estate, by showing the many aspects of today's agriculture and its delicate balance with the cycles of nature and the environment.
For younger guests, Valpane is an "Educational Farm", certified by the Piedmont Region.
The vineyards of Valpane – Click on the image to switch to Google Maps view
The soil is clayey and calcareous:
difficult to work, but excellent for producing grapes and therefore wines of great quality.
Since 2017 all the estate’s products have organic certification, but Valpane has always been run in respect of nature and the territory:
for example, rainwater is still recovered and reused thanks to a cistern of the 1700s, for heating the house and cellar vine shoots are recycled, and for the past twenty years hot water has been produced with solar panels.
This is demonstrated by the LICET® label which, since 2012, has photographed the sustainable actions demonstrating to consumers Valpane’s attention towards 5 sustainability values:
Link with the territory, Innovation, Competitiveness, Eco-sustainability, Protection of people's health and well-being.
“Scelgo il momento della vendemmia in base all’analisi sensoriale delle uve applicando il metodo dell’ICV di Montpellier. In cantina lavoro con fermentazioni alcoliche spontanee senza inoculo di lieviti selezionati, e cerco di attenermi alla tecnica meno invasiva e il più possibile minimalista.”
