There are projects born of a long family history, and others that take shape when someone decides to go back to their roots and build something new. Masiero Wine is one of the second kind. The winery was founded in 2023 by Mattia Masiero, a young enologist who, after working in Italy and abroad, chose to come back to the Colli Berici (Vicenza) and start from the family vineyards to build a project of his own. A young winery, then, yet deeply tied to the land it comes from, and built around one basic principle: letting the fruit, the vineyard and the vintage define the identity of the wine.
Terroir. Quality. Innovation. These are the three words Masiero uses to describe the work. Innovation, though, is not about technology for its own sake. It is a contemporary way of looking at viticulture: going back to simple, pared-back practices and bringing to them the knowledge and the instincts of a new generation of winegrowers. Mattia oversees every step himself, from the vineyard to the cellar, in search of wines that are direct, recognizable and clearly tied to the place they come from.
Mossano and the Colli Berici
Masiero's vineyards lie in Mossano, in the heart of the Colli Berici, in the province of Vicenza: about 3.5 hectares of vines set in a hilly landscape where woods, farmland and wild ground make for an environment rich in biodiversity. The winery itself is in Lumignano, on the eastern slopes of the Berici, where Mattia handles every stage of vinification himself.
The Colli Berici rise out of the Vicenza plain like an island of hills, and they harbor a complex geology in which limestone plays a fundamental role alongside red clay and, in places, basaltic formations of volcanic origin. Elevation, aspect, low rainfall and wide day-to-night temperature swings all help create conditions that are especially favorable to viticulture, and above all to red wines with character.
It is in this setting that Masiero looks for its own identity: not by imposing a style on the place, but by trying to understand its differences and carry them into the wine through low-intervention work.
Tai Rosso: the roots of the Colli Berici
Among the varieties grown on the Colli Berici, one speaks for these hills more than any other: Tai Rosso. Once known as Tocai Rosso, it belongs to the same genetic family as French Grenache, Spanish Garnacha and Sardinian Cannonau, but over the centuries, in the Vicenza area, it has developed an identity of its own, deeply tied to this place.
It is a variety that loves light and warmth and finds especially favorable conditions in the leaner, drier soils of the Berici. Traditionally it gives fragrant wines, ruby but never too deep in color, marked by red fruit, spice and fine-grained, delicate tannins. What makes it one of the most interesting varieties here, though, is above all its ability to take on different shades depending on the vineyard and the winemaking.
For Masiero, Tai Rosso is not simply a variety to grow: it becomes one of the main ways of telling the story of the Colli Berici. Two wines show two different sides of it: Radici and Retai.
Radici and Retai: two interpretations of Tai Rosso
The name Radici (“roots”) already says most of what the wine is about: the bond with the place Mattia comes from, and with a variety that belongs to the grape-growing memory of the Colli Berici. The grapes are picked by hand and ferment in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts and a pied de cuve. Maceration on the skins lasts twelve days, with hand punch-downs; the wine then spends 12 months in third-use barriques and another 6 months in bottle. A reading of Tai Rosso that looks for depth and aging potential without losing the character of the variety.
Retai takes a different path. Its name comes from the idea of a return to the past that keeps looking ahead: in Masiero's view, sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward. The vines are Guyot-trained on a hill in Mossano, picking is by hand, and here too fermentation starts spontaneously, with indigenous yeasts and a pied de cuve. Maceration is shorter, five days on the skins, and the wine is aged for six months in stainless steel only.
So these are two readings of the same variety and the same place: one deeper, built over time, the other more immediate, aimed at the purity of the fruit. In both, what matters most is that the Tai Rosso of the Colli Berici stays recognizable.
Less intervention, more identity
The same thinking runs through everything Masiero Wine does. Picking and most of the work are done by hand, while in the cellar fermentations start spontaneously with indigenous yeasts. A pied de cuve makes it possible to guide the start of fermentation without turning to cultured yeasts, and additions are kept to a minimum.
This is not a search for imperfection, and it is not an ideological choice. It is a decision to step in only when it is needed, putting winemaking know-how at the service of the fruit instead of using it to build a style decided in advance.
In this view, tradition and innovation stop being opposites. Looking back means going back to hand work, spontaneous fermentations and close attention to the vineyard; looking ahead means reading those practices through contemporary knowledge, precision and awareness.
From the reds to Garganega: the many sides of the Berici
Tai Rosso holds the central place, but it is not the whole story. The range takes in several of the varieties that have found their own expression on the Colli Berici, and adds up to a small collection of wines that differ in character and in how they are made.
Preludio marks the start of the journey and is the first wine Mattia conceived and made; Radici and Retai explore two faces of Tai Rosso; with Galea and Spettinato, Garganega enters the picture, another variety with deep roots in the viticulture around Vicenza. Spettinato also shows the grape's most immediate, unconventional side: a frizzante col fondo, lightly sparkling, unfiltered and undisgorged, with the sediment left in the bottle.
Not a range built to a formula, then, but wines that come out of a wish to experiment with the varieties and the vineyards at hand, always keeping the starting point recognizable: the Colli Berici.
Masiero Wine is a young winery that chose to start again from its own roots. In the vineyards of Mossano, Mattia Masiero reads the Colli Berici through spontaneous fermentations, hand work and minimal intervention. At the center is Tai Rosso: the signature grape of these hills, and the common thread of a project that looks ahead without forgetting where it comes from.
Terroir. Quality. Innovation. Three words that sum up a winery founded in 2023 but built on something far older: the relationship between a family, its own vines and the Colli Berici. From the Tai Rosso of Radici and Retai to Garganega, and on to the rest of the range, Masiero Wine speaks for a new generation of Vicenza wine, one in which winemaking knowledge and respect for the fruit become the means to a simple, ambitious end: letting the terroir speak through the wine.
