Call Me By Your Name

There is a name that appears twice in the Tessari family history, belonging to two different women born almost a century apart. Both of these people shaped what the winery (and the family) became, but I strongly doubt either could have imagined the other. 

The first Cornelia was the wife of Antonio Tessari, a farmer in Monteforte d'Alpone in the hills near Soave (which is both a wine region and a lovely town), while the second is their granddaughter who now runs the estate with her brothers Antonio and Germano, and her nephew Nicola (also known as Nick). In between, four generations of a family that has grown grapes on the same volcanic hillside since 1933 without ever once planting anything other than Garganega.

That last detail is the one that struck me the most; it tells me about commitment, passion, and pride.

The Cooperative and the Cellar

In the early decades of the 20th century, most small farming families in Veneto – and in many other Italian regions – sent their grapes to cooperatives. It was the only practical option: a single hectare of Garganega produced too little for a family to process and market independently, and cooperatives offered the infrastructure, the equipment, and the distribution that individual growers could not afford. The cooperative model had its logic, and for many families it remained the right choice for generations.

Antonio Tessari looked at things a little differently, and I can imagine that people around him might have doubted him. Still, in 1932, he decided to break from the local cooperative and begin vinifying his own wine. He had one hectare of Garganega, a patch of volcanic hillside in Monteforte d'Alpone, and a conviction that the grapes he was growing deserved better than to disappear into someone else's blend.

What he did not have was a cellar; so he dug one.
By hand, with basic tools, he carved the first caneva (the local Veneto word for a wine cellar) out of the ground below the family home. It was a small space, dark and cool, with enough room for the concrete fermentation tank he had built. That tank was itself a statement: in the early 1930s, concrete was not a standard material for winemaking. Antonio was experimenting with what he had, trusting the material's thermal properties to manage fermentation in a climate that could be punishingly hot in late September. It worked, and the wine that came out of it was his.

Beside him through all of it was Cornelia, his wife. The winery, when it was eventually named, took her name, not his.

The Soave That Nobody Talks About

Before going any further, it is worth spending a moment on the place itself.

Soave is one of Italy's most widely recognised wine names and yet one of the most misunderstood. For decades it was associated with the kind of light, neutral, mass-produced white wine that filled supermarket shelves across Europe at accessible prices, a consequence of the denomination's expansion in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when the DOC zone was extended far beyond the original hillside Classico zone into the flat plains of the Po River Valley. The plains produced higher volumes, lower quality, and a Soave that tasted of very little.

The original zone of Soave Classico, covering the hillside townships of Soave and Monteforte d'Alpone, is a different story entirely. These are the volcanic hills of the pre-Alps, where basalt and clay soils produce Garganega grapes of unusual mineral complexity. It is a complex ecosystem where multiple elements work hand in hand: while the altitude moderates the heat, the volcanic rock forces roots deep. And so, the wines that come from here are structured, age-worthy, and as different from the plains version as Chablis is from a generic Chardonnay.

Nick describes it with the directness of someone who has explained it many times but has not grown tired of doing so: "When I think about Soave Classico, the word volcano comes to mind. All the hillside used to be a volcano created forty million years ago. We are lucky today to work on three different hills, and all of them have different volcanic characteristics. As you taste the wine, you might be able to recognise some of that minerality, fully driven by our terroir."

Cornelia Tessari works three of those hills; each has its own soil composition, its own exposure, its own character. Each shapes the wine differently.

One Grape, Every Way

The family's commitment to Garganega is absolute and has been tested more than once, and Nick is very candid about it. Over the years, the question has come up repeatedly: should they diversify? Try red grapes? Look at Valpolicella, just across the hill? Experiment with Chardonnay? Each time, the answer has been the same: "The final decision was to stay true to Garganega, because we do believe it has all it takes."

One might think that this is stubbornness, but I disagree. It is a considered position about what makes a small family estate meaningful. In a world where differentiation often means adding variety – more grapes, more styles, more range – the Tessari family has chosen to differentiate through depth. The same grape, approached differently, can produce wines that are startlingly unlike each other. The challenge is not to find something new to plant. It is to understand everything Garganega is capable of, and then to find the right container for each expression.

Innovation, for this family, comes from technique rather than variety; from the way they handle the skins, the length of maceration, the vessel in which the wine rests, the decision to dry or not to dry before pressing. Nick brings with him nearly a century of family winemaking knowledge rooted in Italian viticulture, and he applies it to a grape he has been learning since childhood.

Aldo, Bianca, and the Second Generation

Antonio and Cornelia's son Aldo, together with his wife Bianca, took over the winery and grew it through years of considerable sacrifice. As a result, the estate expanded from its original single hectare, and the wines began to travel beyond the immediate area. Aldo had inherited both the land and the conviction that Garganega from these specific volcanic hillsides was worth taking seriously, and he built on it without abandoning what his parents had started.

It was also Aldo and Bianca who decided on the name Cornelia Tessari for the estate: a tribute to the woman who had stood alongside Antonio from the beginning, whose name was carried to market on every bottle.

Today the third generation at the helm is represented by Antonio, Cornelia, and Germano (Aldo and Bianca's children). Antonio runs the winery, responsible for winemaking and the final decisions on how each wine comes out. Germano looks after the fields: pruning schedules, harvest timing, grass cutting. Cornelia, who shares the same name as her grandmother, has, with her brothers, taken this winery to new heights, recently opening a wonderful wine hospitality retreat called Corte Grisela on the estate. Between the three of them, nothing is outsourced, nothing is purchased from outside, and the wine is theirs from vine to bottle.

The Fourth Generation

A few years ago, Nick joined the company as the first representative of the fourth generation of Tessaris at the winery. For a time, he had lived in Canada, which is where he met Taylor, the woman who would become his wife and, eventually, his collaborator on the project that defines this generation's contribution to the family story.

Nick handles export and business development alongside Cornelia, his aunt – the small age gap between them making the generational label feel almost beside the point, as he tells it with a laugh. Taylor took to the family business immediately, and is now the one driving marketing and sustainability. Together, they have shaped the most visible new direction the estate has taken in years.

What Nick inherited from his great-grandparents, his grandfather Aldo, and his father Antonio was not just a winery. It was a way of thinking about a single piece of volcanic hillside and everything it was capable of expressing. The concrete tank that Antonio dug by hand in the 1930s still informs how Nick thinks about vinification today. Primo Ettaro (the wine made from the original first hectare, from vines between 70 and 80 years old) is still fermented and aged in concrete. "For a very special parcel to us, the parcel of our history, where it all started, we decided to continue vinification in a similar way, through concrete, which is what my great-grandparents did."

The organic transition began in 2015, and the winery has been fully certified organic since 2018, with all wines also certified vegan. No manure is used in the fields, everything is vegetable-based compost, part of an upcycling project that has been running for eight years. The FIVI certification (the Italian Federation for Independent Winegrowers) followed around the same time. For Nick, FIVI is more than a label, but rather a commitment: full traceability from vine to bottle, nothing entering the process from outside the family's control.

The next step is CO2 neutrality by 2028, through a reforestation and replantation project that is still developing; the targets are specific, and the timeline is public. It is the kind of vision that does not emerge from marketing departments, but it comes from people who have farmed the same hillside for four generations and have started thinking seriously about what they owe it.

Era di OutGrowth

The most recent chapter in the Tessari story was written by Nick and Taylor together, once again showing their full commitment to the family business and tradition. Era di OutGrowth is a project that unites generations and geographies: Nick brings nearly a century of Italian family viticulture knowledge; Taylor contributes with sustainability inspiration from her Canadian roots. Together, thinking about their children, they have built something that bridges both.

The project is not simply about producing excellent wines. With each bottle sold, profits contribute to a reforestation programme (planting bamboo forests that produce oxygen, alongside indigenous botanical species) as part of a mission to revitalise ecosystems and work toward CO2 neutrality. The wine itself, called Era di OutGrowth Costalta Garganega Soave Classico, comes from the Costalta hill, on basalt-rich volcanic soil, late-harvested by hand, fermented at controlled temperature, with batonnage to add texture and roundness. It is a wine made with the intention that buying it contributes to something beyond the glass.

The Wines

When I visited the winery in February this year, I had the pleasure to try their full range, and making a decision on what to carry was not easy. But with small quantities at hand, I think our focus on their top range was the right approach.

	Natus – Soave DOC Spumante, Metodo Classico Named by Nick's young cousin Sergio, from the Latin for "the last born." 1,300 bottles a year, 40 months on the lees, extra brut with 2 grams of residual sugar. The name was chosen almost casually, as the family had been using Latin names in the past, and needed something that worked; but it has since earned its place as the clearest statement of what this family believes about Garganega: that it can do things no one has yet fully asked of it.
	Bine Longhe – Soave Classico Superiore DOCG From the Costalta hill, on southwest-facing basalt-rich slopes. The grapes are dried on the vine for three weeks after the shoot is cut, a technique that concentrates the balsamic notes that define this wine's character. One day of maceration in the press, then 18 months in steel and a further year in bottle. The longest-living wine in the range.
	Primo Ettaro – Soave Classico Superiore DOCG From the original first hectare purchased in 1929, vines between 70 and 80 years old producing no more than 2,000 bottles a year. Hand-selected bunches are dried for two and a half months (the famous appassimento technique), then macerated on the skins for five days in steel before finishing in concrete: the very same method Antonio used when he hand-dug the first cellar. The 2022 vintage is currently available; this is a wine that continues to develop beautifully in bottle.

I do believe we will expand on the range from Cornelia Tessari, particularly because they have two specific bottles that surprised me beyond my expectations: a fantastic vermouth, fully Garganega-based, smooth and silky, almost revelatory. And their amazing dessert wine, Tre Colli, a Recioto di Soave DOCG that blew my mind.

The Same Name, Twice

There is something in the fact that the winery carries the name of a woman who is no longer here and at the same time of a woman who is still building what comes next. Two Cornelias, ninety years apart, connected by a piece of volcanic hillside, a grape variety, and a family that has never been able to stop believing in both.
The concrete tank still stands, the first hectare still produces, and the name on the label is still hers.

Some things, it turns out, are worth keeping exactly as they are.