Denavolo

Denavolo, that's the name of the mountain on which this 5 hectare small winery sits, in Emilia-Romagna near theApennines. It is run by Giulio Armani. Giulio makes the wines with his son Jacopo, who enjoys working in the vineyards, while Giulio, who also vinifies the wines of La Stoppa, approaches the cellar work with the meticulousness of an alchemist. There, he maintains a sort of secret laboratory, the likes of which one would hardly expect to find in a natural wine cellar. However, he doesn't use the lab to take anything out of or add anything to the wines; he analyzes everything. "Guilio let this bottle from a famous producer sit open on the shelf for two months and let me taste it," says Bogdan, who imports Denavolo's wines to Berlin with Confetti People. "It was an absolutely pure, stable wine. For Giulio, this is the idea of natural winemaking. He tests every parameter, of these great pre-industrial wines, just to understand them. He's passionate about French classics, the way they used to be made. Now the market dictates winemaking, but back then the best wines were always made naturally. There was only natural wine, so to speak, but that changed in the '60s and '70s with industrialization. That's why he likes to taste the classic wines to understand how good and stable wine can be without any additives. This is how wine is made at La Stoppa. No additives, no deductions, spontaneous fermentations, no temperature control, just time and the evaluation of the moment."