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Azienda Agricola Corte Sant'Alda

Marinella Camerani's Corte Sant'Alda is the only Veneto estate certified both organic and Demeter biodynamic, farming 19 hectares in Valpolicella Classica and producing a Ripasso that holds freshness alongside earthy depth.

The producer

Corte Sant'Alda sits in the Valpolicella Classica hills west of Verona, where Marinella Camerani farms approximately 19 hectares of Corvina Veronese, Corvinone, Rondinella, and Molinara under Demeter biodynamic and organic certification. No other estate in the Veneto holds both certifications simultaneously. Gambero Rosso named Camerani Winemaker of the Year in the Vini d'Italia 2024 guide, a judgement earned across decades of farming the same hillside parcels without synthetic inputs.

The signature wine is the Vigneto Campi Magri Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso: a Corvina-dominant red refermented on the warm pomace left from Amarone production, which adds dried-cherry depth, earthy richness, and tannin to the base wine while the biodynamic farming preserves the freshness and length that set it apart from heavier examples of the Ripasso style.

Known for

Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso; Demeter biodynamic viticulture

Notable facts

The story

The Grass

Marinella Camerani's vineyard rows at Corte Sant'Alda look, from the road, like an estate that has not got round to tidying. The grass between the vines grows higher than convention allows, and the soil between the rows is not the bare, worked earth that signals a well-managed Veneto property to most passing observers. Camerani's reasoning runs in the opposite direction: high grass means the root systems below it are working, competing, and going deeper. She farms toward root depth and soil life rather than toward the appearance of control. The rows stay untidy. The Campi Magri Ripasso, made from fruit grown above those untidy rows, has been noted by reviewers for freshness and length that sit outside the normal range for the style. The two facts are connected, in Camerani's view, by what happens below the surface.

The Grass

Marinella Camerani's vineyard rows at Corte Sant'Alda look, from the road, like an estate that has not got round to tidying. The grass between the vines grows higher than convention allows, and the soil between the rows is not the bare, worked earth that signals a well-managed Veneto property to most passing observers. Camerani's reasoning runs in the opposite direction: high grass means the root systems below it are working, competing, and going deeper. She farms toward root depth and soil life rather than toward the appearance of control. The rows stay untidy. The Campi Magri Ripasso, made from fruit grown above those untidy rows, has been noted by reviewers for freshness and length that sit outside the normal range for the style. The two facts are connected, in Camerani's view, by what happens below the surface.

From the atlas

Azienda Agricola Corte Sant'Alda

At A Glance

Producer: Azienda Agricola Corte Sant'Alda Country: Italy Region: Veneto Zone: Valpolicella Classica Grapes: Corvina Veronese, Corvinone, Rondinella, Molinara Signature wine: Vigneto Campi Magri Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso Certification: Demeter biodynamic and organic Production: approximately 100,000 bottles per year Vineyards: approximately 19 hectares

The Producer

Marinella Camerani makes wine in the Valpolicella Classica hills west of Verona, where the original and most regarded parcels of the appellation sit above the valley floor. Gambero Rosso named her Winemaker of the Year in the Vini d'Italia 2024 guide, a judgement grounded in decades of farming the same 19 hectares without compromise. Corte Sant'Alda carries both organic and Demeter biodynamic certification, a combination found nowhere else in the Veneto. The estate produces the four wines that define the Valpolicella hierarchy: a fresh Classico, a structured Superiore, the Campi Magri Ripasso, and an Amarone. The Ripasso is the wine most people come to first, and it earns that position.

Place

Valpolicella Classica is the historical core of the broader Valpolicella appellation, a zone of parallel valleys cut into limestone and volcanic hills running northwest from Verona. The Classica designation identifies the original hillside communes: Negrar, Marano, Fumane, Sant'Ambrogio, and San Pietro in Cariano. Wines from this zone carry the Classico suffix on the label, marking them as coming from the steeper, cooler hillside plots rather than the expanded flatland vineyards added to the appellation in the 1960s. The climate is continental with strong lake influence from Lake Garda to the west, moderating summer heat and extending the growing season into autumn. That longer season matters for Corvina Veronese, the dominant grape: it ripens late and rewards the extra hang time with the cherry and dried-fruit character that defines the style.

Soil And Site

The Campi Magri vineyard sits on limestone-clay soils typical of the Valpolicella hillside. Limestone drains freely and keeps vine roots working downward through summer drought, producing grapes with concentrated flavour and firm acidity. The elevation brings cooler nights than the valley floor, preserving the freshness unusual within its category. Biodynamic farming over multiple decades has built up organic matter and soil life across all 19 hectares, changing the texture and depth of the vineyard floor in ways that take years to show in the wine.

Story

Camerani inherited a working farm and spent the following decades converting it, step by step, away from conventional viticulture. The move from conventional to organic to full Demeter biodynamic practice was not a single decision but a long sequence of them: the first certification, the change in farming calendar, the shift in how the soil was read and managed. Each stage changed what the vineyards looked like from the outside and what the fruit looked like at harvest. By the time the 2024 Gambero Rosso guide appeared with her name at the top of the Winemaker of the Year list, Corte Sant'Alda had been farming biodynamically for long enough that the certification was simply a fact of the estate, not a recent conversion or a marketing claim. The wines followed: the Ripasso that holds freshness where most examples in the category run heavy, the Amarone that carries the same coherence from a more concentrated base.

Vineyards And Cellar

All vines are farmed under Demeter biodynamic protocol, the certification that goes further than organic by requiring a complete farm organism: preparations applied on a lunar calendar, cover crops managed as part of the ecosystem, no synthetic inputs of any kind. Camerani lets grass grow between the rows at heights that would prompt a neighbour to reach for the mower. She reads that grass as a measure of root health rather than as disorder. Deeper roots mean the vines draw from a larger soil column, which translates into more complex, more mineral fruit at harvest.

In the cellar, the Ripasso method connects the Campi Magri wine directly to the Amarone production. After the Amarone grapes are pressed, the still-warm pomace carries residual sugars, dried-fruit compounds, tannin, and aromatic complexity. Valpolicella base wine referments through this pomace in a second fermentation, gaining body, dried-cherry depth, and tannin while retaining the freshness of the original grape character. At Corte Sant'Alda, the biodynamic fruit going into this process is different enough from conventionally farmed Ripasso that the result separates itself from the heavier end of the category.

Wines

The range runs across four appellation levels and reflects the full Valpolicella hierarchy.

The Valpolicella Classico is the everyday wine: Corvina-led, light-bodied, with the bright cherry acidity and leafy character typical of the hillside Classica zone. It ferments and bottles young, built for drinking rather than cellaring.

The Valpolicella Superiore requires a minimum of one year ageing before release and sits a register higher: more tannin, more depth, more grip from the extended skin contact and time in vessel.

The Vigneto Campi Magri Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso is the estate's centre of gravity. Cherry pie on the nose with floral lift and leafy overtones, then an earthy, full palate that keeps unusual freshness through the mid-palate and into a long finish. The combination of biodynamic farming and the Ripasso method produces a wine that holds richness and lightness at the same time, an uncommon achievement in a category where most examples choose one or the other.

The Amarone della Valpolicella sits at the top of the range, made from Corvina-dominant grapes that have been dried for several months after harvest, concentrating sugar, flavour, and colour before fermentation. It is the estate's most age-worthy and most concentrated wine, and it generates the pomace used for the Campi Magri Ripasso's second fermentation.

In The Glass

The Campi Magri Ripasso opens with cherry pie and dried cherry on the nose, with a floral note and a green, leafy edge from the Corvina character. In the mouth the wine is fuller than a straight Valpolicella but lighter than a typical Ripasso: the earthy richness is present but the acidity runs long underneath it, keeping the palate from heaviness. The mid-palate shows the dried-fruit influence of the Amarone pomace without tipping into the sweetness that can blunt lesser examples of the style. The finish is firm and long, with a mineral dryness on the close that comes from the limestone-clay hillside.

Across the range, the biodynamic farming produces fruit with a clarity of flavour that shows most clearly in the freshness: the acidity reads clean rather than sour, the cherry fruit reads precise rather than jammy, and the wines feel alive rather than extracted.

A Bottle To Understand It

The Vigneto Campi Magri Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso is the bottle that shows what Corte Sant'Alda does. It is a Ripasso, which means a Valpolicella base wine refermented on the dried-grape pomace of the Amarone harvest, picking up tannin, dried-fruit depth, and body in the process. What separates this bottle from most Ripasso is the freshness: cherry pie aromas with floral and leafy overtones, then a rich, earthy palate that stays lifted through a long finish. It is fuller than the Classico and lighter than the Amarone, and it shows the Corvina grape and the Campi Magri hillside in one glass without needing either the simplicity of the entry wine or the weight of the top one.

Anecdote

Marinella Camerani's vineyard rows at Corte Sant'Alda look, from the road, like an estate that has not got round to tidying. The grass between the vines grows higher than convention allows, and the soil between the rows is not the bare, worked earth that signals a well-managed Veneto property to most passing observers. Camerani's reasoning runs in the opposite direction: high grass means the root systems below it are working, competing, and going deeper. She farms toward root depth and soil life rather than toward the appearance of control. The rows stay untidy. The Campi Magri Ripasso, made from fruit grown above those untidy rows, has been noted by reviewers for freshness and length that sit outside the normal range for the style. The two facts are connected, in Camerani's view, by what happens below the surface.

Final Word

Corte Sant'Alda is the only estate in the Veneto with simultaneous organic and Demeter biodynamic certification, and Marinella Camerani has held that position long enough that it belongs to the estate's character rather than its marketing. The Campi Magri Ripasso is earthy, fresh, and long, shaped by a farming philosophy that most of its neighbours have not followed. Start with the Ripasso to understand what the Valpolicella hillside can do when it is farmed from the ground up.

Sources

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