Dolo-Vini-Miti

The first vertical wine festival in Trentino

It’s official! Enter Dolo-Vini-Miti, the vertical wine Festival. The first edition this year will be hosted by Valli di Fiemme and Cembra. From Friday 11 to Sunday 15 October 2024, heroic viticulture, the vertical type in the mountains, will finally have the spotlight on itself to be showcased to the world.

It will do so starting from Val di Cembra, which features 708 km of dry stone walls, UNESCO intangible heritage for the art of construction, on a height variance of over 700 metres, where the vineyards draw a seamless vertical landscape that starts from the Avisio stream and climbs up to the peaks of the Cembra valley, over 1000 metres.

In September 2020, this land was named Historic Rural Landscape of Italy by the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies.

Dolo-Vini-Miti wine festival

Dolo –

Dolo(mites) like our mountains where the landscape is preserved thanks to the tenacity, passion and dedication of those who, generation after generation, maintain a complex crop in rather challenging situations, while continuing to raise its value and quality.

Cultivating vines on narrow, steep porphyry slopes and, consequently, quarries that could be reactivated at any moment in times of severe economic crisis, means taking risks and giving up mechanisation. Manual viticulture preserves the landscape and raises the value of each harvest, pushing research and experimentation in cultivation and in the cellar to the maximum.

The terraced vineyards, supported by dry stone walls, are cultivated according to a traditional system that is lost in the mists of time, that of the Trentino pergola. It consists in raising the trunk of the vine up to about 1.5 metres from the ground and then orienting the fruiting heads obliquely to the plane but transversal to the direction of the row. That is how sloping roofs grow towards the mountain, which allow the grapes to enjoy maximum sun exposure and, at the same time, protection from harsh weather.

Caneve en festa | © Archivio Trentino Mktg

- Vini –

Not just any wines, therefore, but heroic wines, those capable of accomplishing great feats. Exceptional wines, which belong to the myth, and in the next paragraph we will see why in detail. The characteristic of the heroic wines of the Cembra area, however, is quality, which has grown so much over time that it has crossed national borders.

Here the vineyards draw pieces of a large colored mosaic. And it is here that in 1952 the highest winery in Trentino was born, Cembra Cantina di Montagna, which has about 300 conferring members and, focusing on the conversion of the production of white grape varieties, has performed a miracle. The DOC wines from the valley are very fragrant. Müller Thurgau, Kerner, Pinot bianco, Chardonnay, Riesling but also, with black grapes, Pinot nero and Schiava stand out.

What makes these wines so special is certainly the soil. It is a soil mainly made up of effusive volcanic rock that has built a terrain of porphyry pebbles, limestone and sand. It is this composition that gives an intense yet elegant minerality to each bottle. And then there is the breeze raising from Valle dei Laghi, which mitigates the temperatures and gives the slopes a lot of light.

 

Baite en festa | © Archivio Trentino Mktg

- Miti

Heroes build a myth when it becomes a symbol of the aspirations and identity of an entire community. Here we have two categories of heroes: producers and production.

Those who have made it possible over the centuries to keep Val di Cembra as a stable and productive territory, despite the risk of hydrogeological instability, are the winegrowers. People who have handed down knowledge and pride from father to son, and have managed in recent years to accomplish exceptional feats in terms of international recognition and appreciation of their labels.

And then, the wines. According to CERVIM, the international body that studies, enhances and safeguards heroic mountain viticulture, wines that are born from a complex work, far from modern mechanisation, under exceptional climatic conditions, on lands whose minimum slope is 30% and the altitude is over 500 metres above sea level can only be called heroic.

Myths here become stories that you can come and experience and learn about in vineyards, villages and cellars. And they become wine experiences through tastings, samplings and, why not, harvests.

Dolo-Vini-Miti wine festival

The Festival

The Dolo-Vini-Miti festival is a vertical festival in every sense. Vertical is the territory that you will have the opportunity to explore through guided trekking, food and wine tours through huts, vineyards and caneve in villages (a room in the farmers’ house where the grapes were vinified), through the colours of foliage and the evidence of rock shaped by the force of the water. Vertical will be the tastings in which you will be able to experience the evolution of wine during aging and maturation.

You will be able to experience all this in Val di Cembra, where each winery will open its doors to tourists, visitors and wine-lovers at the very moment in which the harvest ends.

In addition, in Val di Fiemme, during the Festival, you will be able to enjoy two exceptional appointments: two aperitif-events at high altitude with the Dolomites in plain view.

In short, ten days not to be missed. Stay up to date on the programme but start locking down your days on the agenda!

Dolo-Vini-Miti

Dolo-Vini-Miti

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Published on 12/07/2024