A new vision of Italian wine Masi brings “creative fermentation” to the vino experience
At 88, Sandro Boscaini is a font of energy and ideas about modernity, Italian culture and, of course, wine.
The longtime wine pioneer of Masi, associated with Amarone della Valpolicella and other wines from Italy to Argentina, is restless. He seems annoyed about the way wine is so often explained by reciting technical details of production.
“We have only been talking about how wine is made,” he says in a critique of the wine world. “But how many people care?”
Then, recounting an epiphany he had some years ago, he pulls his telephone out of his jacket pocket.
“Is there anybody who asks, ‘How is the telephone made?’” He says. “No—but people use it and enjoy it just the same.”
In other words, there is lots more that goes into experiencing and learning about wine beyond the enological details.
Boscaini is lunching in the modern light-filled restaurant called Locanda Costasera in Masi’s new sleek visitor center called Monteleone21, based on Boscaini’s decades of travel and drawing on influences from Napa and Sonoma—chief among them the eclectic Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville.
“The idea was to turn the page on wine,” Boscaini says of Monteleone21 first conceived in 2012 with the now late great Verona architect Libero Cecchini. “To present wine in a different way.”
“Wine needs to be discussed at the center of lifestyle, culture, gastronomy, history, tourism, terroir, tradition and innovation—everything.” He says.
Set into Valpolicella vineyards, Monteleone21 is a work in progress with areas still under construction. A nearly 90,000-square foot spiraling stone and glass modern structure—designed after a sea ammonite—the extinct prehistoric mollusks that commonly left their fossilized impressions in stone quarries the world over, including those of Valpolicella.
The ground floor is dedicated to a wine shop, lounges, a tasting bistro and its “wine-first“ Locanda Costasera featuring specific wine-food pairings with Masi’s lineup of 60 still and sparkling wines from across northern Italy and Tuscany to Masi’s Tupungato in Mendoza, Argentina.
On the unfished floor above, Masi plans to build out educational spaces and labs for the use of wine and culinary education associations.
The most intriguing and freewheeling aspect of the project is found at ground level in a soaring 40-foot high fruttaio – a drying room that will be used three months after harvest starting in 2026 for the grapes used for Amarone.
Until then—as well as the nine months a year when the room is not in use for Amarone production—it will be used for what Boscaini calls a “center for creative fermentation.”
For the opening of Monteleone21, Masi commissioned a dramatic multi-media installation called “The Soul of Amarone” from the Venetian internationally acclaimed video artist Fabrizio Plessi, who was awarded a Masi prize this year. (The awards which include a barrel of Amarone were founded in 1981 and recognize contributions to art, culture, literature, wine and humanity. Past winners include a range of talents from Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli to Champagne’s Krug family.)
The installation, which will remain in place through next summer. Is stunning and typically Plessi, who is known for dynamic large-scale installations on themes like water, fire, lightning or smoke.
The “Soul of Amarone” is composed of four identical stations—each consisting of a black 26-foot-long Sandolo (the traditional Venetian flat-bottom cargo rowboat similar to a gondola) facing a tall, arched two-sided video screen. Both faces of the screens as well as longer screens set in the boats’ hulls play similar but not identical videos of cascading red wine must.
The work is not just visual. At the back of each vertical screen is a pile of drying grape bunches with their faint aromas of fruit and wood. The audio played on surrounding speakers features a meditative electronic sound loop accompanied by a minimalist piano composition by British composer Michael Nyman.
“The idea is [the space] is the cathedral of Amarone and [the work] is its soul,” says Boscaini.
Monteleone21 shows off the complexity of Masi today: a publicly traded (family-run) corporation that wants to be a player in world culture, and a big enterprise producing about 1.6 million cases of wine while still focusing on terroir.
Masi is also simultaneously traditional and experimental—producing novel blends as well as low-alcohol organic wines for cocktail mixing.
Lunch with Boscani starts with a white wine gin and tonic and ends with a glass of Masi’s vinous crown jewel: Vajo dei Masi, a limited edition Amarone from a single vineyard the Boscaini family has farmed since the 18th century. It’s released 25 years after harvest. After three years in barrel, the wine is stored an additional two decades in stainless steel tanks protected by inert gas. The hard -to-find wine retails for about $445 in Masi’s wine shop.
“It’s like an old wine that is beginning to live just now,” enthuses Boscaini, who continues to inject Masi with something from his own fountain of youth.
