Li Veli Vigneto Montecristo 'Valdana' Aleatico Passito dell'Elba 2007
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In 1999 the Falvo family, with over 40 years of experience in the wine business, purchased and renovated the property to give birth to an ambitious project in Apulia, a region with a long vine-growing tradition.
Masseria Li Veli is located on an ancient Messapian site dominating the fertile and sunny Salento plain. It was founded by the Marquis Antonio de Viti de Marco (1858-1943), an internationally known Italian economist and university professor, Radical Party Deputy of the Reign of Italy, whose ambitious project was to transform the Masseria into a model cellar for the entire South. Today the beautifully restored Masseria covers an area of 33.000 sqm, 3750 of which include offices, a reception area, vinification, storage and ageing cellars.
Masseria Li Veli produces quintessentially Puglian wines from mostly native grape varieties. The Li Veli estate comprises 85 acres of vineyards around the masseria planted with the well-known Puglian grape varieties Negroamaro and Primitivo, as well as with several less familiar local native grape varieties such as Susumaniello, Verdeca, and Minutolo. The vineyards use an ancient form of vine training: bush-trained(albarello) vines in a hexagonal configuration (known as the settonce system). Li Veli uses this type of training because they feel it allows high planting density, maximum exposure of foliage to the sun, good air circulation, maximum space for roots, and ease of cultivation.
All the grapes of Li Veli's estate vineyards are produced according to sustainable methods. There are two line from Li Veli, the main line includes reds wines made from Negroamaro, Primitivo, including a Rosato and a Fiano based white wine. The Askos line features wines made from distinctly Puglian grape varieties: Malvasia Nera di Lecce, Primitivo, Susumaniello, and Verdeca.
Production is overseen by one of Italy's most respected consulting winemakers, Roberto Cotarella.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
The biggest island in the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest Italian island after Sardinia and Sicily—though that isn’t saying mush since it is a lot smaller—Elba is an extraordinarily gorgeous island, surrounded by vast aquamarine waters. Only 250 acres are planted with the main grapes as Trebbiano, Vermentino, Ansonica (Sicily’s Inzolia), and Sangiovese. Elba is also home to the sweet and exotic red Aleatico passito.