History has been used to brand wine for centuries. So when recent excavations uncovered an 1,800-year-old Roman villa’s elaborate mosaics in a Valpolicella area vineyard, wines were sure to follow.
The colorful, pristine mosaics were found in a one-acre vineyard plot divided between two modest, locally rooted vintners, who have helped pay the costs of excavating and protecting the site, as part of an agreement with the Italian government.
As compensation, each winery is allowed to use images from the mosaics found under their soils, and both offer tours of the villa site, along with wine tastings, to winery visitors.
“There’s history, culture and tradition all together here,” enthuses Simone Benedetti, 52, who runs Benedetti La Villa winery with his twin, Matteo.
He’s right. Benedetti La Villa and neighbor Franchini don’t have the renown of other producers in the comune of Negrar, from the local cooperative’s Domini Veneti label to cult producer Giuseppe Quintarelli. (And neither has distribution in the U.S. market.) But they can show off the villa.
The Benedettis, who have farmed in Negrar since the 19th century, bought the farmhouse-cum-winery and vineyards adjacent to the Roman villa site in the 1970s, later adding “La Villa” to the winery’s name.
The presence of the Roman country villa has long been known here; excavations in the late 19th century unearthed mosaics that were taken to Verona’s Archaeological Museum.
After the Benedetti brothers bought a little more than half the villa site from a local family in 2019, they began pushing officials in Italy's department of architecture for a full excavation and paid on their own to have archaeologists do spot digging.
When new mosaics were found, the Benedettis approached other area producers to help fund a larger dig. After all, Simone argued, the Romans were believed to have invented the appassimento technique of drying grapes on mats before fermenting them—the key to producing the area’s most prestigious wine, Amarone della Valpolicella.
“There was just a lot of talk,” but no commitments, Simone says.
Enter Giuliano Franchini, an energetic neighbor from less than a mile up the hill, who bought the slightly smaller half of the villa site for an over-market premium and agreed to join the Benedettis in paying for the excavation.
“I was born in Negrar. This is in my DNA,” says Franchini, 63, a local thermal engineer who began producing wine commercially from his family’s vineyards in 2010. “It’s a unique emotion—to see what they did 20,000 years ago without modern technology.”
Today, excavations are complete after the two wineries spent a combined total of $300,000. The mosaics—now protected from the elements with provisional, tent-like awnings—feature intricate geometric patterns and garlands, depictions of flora and fauna and human portraits. A multi-million-dollar public museum is being planned.
Meanwhile, both wineries have released wines with labels depicting mosaics found under their respective pieces of land.
Benedetti La Villa, the larger of the two, produces about 15,000 cases annually from more than 60 vineyard acres. It recently introduced its “Mosaico” line, named Adriano La Villa, with labels featuring decorative swaths from the mosaics.
The first, released in December 2021 for 60 euros, was a selection of their 2015 Amarone, made from the classic blend of local grapes: Corvina, Corvinone and Rondinella.
“The idea is to use our best wine and more structured grapes for a step up [in quality],” explains Benedetti.
In 2022, they followed up with a 2017 Amarone-like dry Veneto IGT Passito Rosso called Musivo, a 2019 Valpolicella Classico Superiore Ripasso (a method in which grape skins left over from making Amarone or Recioto are added to a young wine to boost its concentration) and a 2019 Valpolicella Classico Superiore, made without drying the grapes and priced at only 9 euros.
Franchini, who produces about 2,000 cases from 12 acres, has gone some steps further.
In addition to making classic Valpollicella appellation reds, Franchini has long cultivated a range of international grapes and experimented with complex blends.
With the idea of using a selection of varieties as broad as ancient Rome’s empire, he has produced 150 cases each of two mosaic-branded wines. In December, Franchini released his 2021 Candidus Veneto IGT Bianco made with seven white varieties—nearby Soave’s Garganega, Saorin, Fernanda (aka Cortese), Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco and Muscat—partly from vines that had to be transplanted from the excavation site to a new vineyard. Priced at 35 euros, the wine is labeled with a villa mosaic portrait of a bearded man.
He followed up in April with a Verona IGT Rosso from the 2018 vintage called Imperium XXI, which bears a villa mosaic portrait of a woman. It’s a big Amarone-like wine made from 21 varieties that undergo 60 days of drying before a long process of fermentation and maceration. In addition to Valpolicella’s classic mix of grapes, it includes Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, Sangiovese and Teroldego, just to name a few. Its price straight from the winery is an imperial 200 euros.
To launch the wine, Franchini hosted a small lunch in Negrar featuring a menu inspired by ancient Rome.
Chef Angelo Zantedeschi, owner of the seafood-focused restaurant Casale Spighetta in Negrar, consulted regional archaeologists to develop the dishes, which included two preparations of eel: one marinated in vinegar and then sprinkled with his homemade garum (the strong fermented anchovy sauce of antiquity), and the other cooked over wood embers with a marinade of honey and bay leaf.
Wild local greens, wild asparagus and wild herbs were sprinkled throughout the dishes, which also included a salad of heirloom wheat. Instead of bread, there was unleavened wood-grilled focaccia from milled farro. Dessert was dried fruits stuffed with fresh goat cheese and nuts. (The Romans apparently didn’t go for pâtisserie.)
We didn’t lounge on sofas and pick from platters with fingers and spoons but had modern table service brought out in courses. In this chef’s hands, ancient Rome tasted so fresh and delicate that it makes me hungry thinking about it. I’m glad to know Zantedeschi will keep some of these items on his restaurant’s menu and even prepare similar tastings with advance notice.
As for the wines—served in glasses and not Roman bowls—they were clearly modern.
As Valpolicella has undergone a boom in recent decades, improvements in winemaking have erased the rusticity of wines that were often hampered by oxidation. Neither the Benedettis nor Franchini are nostalgic for historic winemaking. Neither winery is experimenting with Roman-style amphorae; they both ferment wines in stainless steel tanks and use oak barrels for aging. For now, they are doing what so much wine marketing does: make us dream.
“There’s been a lot of enthusiasm about the villa, especially among foreigners,” says Benedetti, adding, “They don’t have all that we have in Italy.”
