Vineyards

The property is collected, without interruption, in a single lot, embraced by the Delma hill to the west and the Madonna della Rosa hill to the south. What we can admire today is the result of millions of years of environmental, atmospheric, and telluric phenomena that have led to a strong differentiation among the various soils.

In remote times, farmers were able to understand which areas were most suitable for vine cultivation by tasting the fruit, and, not by chance, the villages were located where the value of the land and the fruit generated from it were noteworthy. Alessandro Bianchi, comforted by what was said by Gabriele Rosa, a well-known agronomist, about the inimitable quality of the wines from "Monticello," commissioned zoning studies of the entire property starting in 1960, studies that are now supported not only by decades of harvests but also by new, even more precise scientific research that confirms the absolute value and unique and inimitable characteristics of the most suitable micro-terroirs of the entire property.

35 plots, embraced by the two hills, all different from each other for the location of the soils and exposure, are enhanced by the presence of vines of different types, different clones and different rootstocks. Pinot bianco, Chardonnay, and Pinot nero, the 3 varieties that Villa Franciacorta has always considered the only important treasures from which its precious wines originate.

Tenuta Martinello is a 16th-century estate, a place of childhood memories that Alessandro Bianchi decides to give to his daughter Roberta, who is in love with the rare beauty of the place and the excellent exposure of the surrounding lands. Martinello is mostly covered by chestnut and oak forests and has an organic olive grove that produces extra virgin oil. The vineyards are very fertile with a high presence of organic matter and a gravelly substrate. The Martinello area is located on the border of the first Franciacorta moraine circle, with respect to the center of the ancient glacier that gave origin to the orography of a good part of the territory. The area is characterized by different exposures, always open to the circulation of air, on a hill where rounded pebbles, skeleton, sand, and clay intersect because of fluvioglacial action. Some large erratic boulders in Tonalite, one of which is particularly huge, originating from the Adamello Park granite in the high Valle Camonica, are a testimony to this. The resulting substrate is occasionally deep, sometimes more superficial, but always drained and dry, with a balanced limestone content. The breezes from the valley, mitigated by the contribution of the lake, are very interesting and always present. "In this harmony of interactions, we have identified the best conditions for the expression of a Pinot Noir destined to become a great Cru."

The different topoclimates, the different terroirs and microterroirs, influence in different ways the growth of the plants and the production and quality they are able to generate. All of this represents a wealth of variety in the raw material, the grape, the indispensable source of Villa Franciacorta's strongly identifiable wines. The average age of the vine stock is 25 years with peaks of up to 45 years. All this translates into a fruit of undisputed potential and the choice, aware of the value of this heritage, to make wine exclusively from estate grapes.