Quality vineyard
It is a project born with the new millennium. Previously, the selection of the best grapes was made, allocating the most current quality ones to separate processing lines, to produce wines of different quality and price: but this selection was made on the square at the delivery of the grapes, based on the sugar content and the health of fruit.
With the “quality vineyard” project, the best vineyards were selected upstream, in the most suitable areas, led by the most experienced and helpful winemakers, providing them with specialized technical assistance to maximize the quality of the final product.
The grapes would have been paid more, not only based on the sugar content but also by adopting a multi-parameter scale that also took into account the commitment of the shareholder.
The “quality vineyard” initially involved a minority of farmers, but over time the circle has expanded a lot and has driven towards quality improvement, supported by the agronomic service and the price policy adopted, with a positive result on the whole production.
Sustainability: organic and integrated viticulture
Controlling the impact on the environment and the health of viticulture has been a pillar of the winery’s agronomic service activity since its inception.
This has led over time to the abandonment of the most impacting chemical products and all herbicides in the treatments in the vineyards, and to the adoption of alternative techniques, such as biological control and the sexual confusion of harmful insects.
In the last ten years an increasing number of winemakers have chosen the organic path, allowing the winery to produce a new line of organic brand wines.
A network of modern electronic weather stations, associated with advanced predictive biological models on parasite cycles, allows our technicians to predict moments of risk and those of "tranquility”: the warnings issued to winemakers thus allow to limit the number of pesticide treatments to a minimum essential and to reduce the drift knowing, from the precise forecasts, the hours of least wind.
The bank of the vineyards
An innovative project that has had a wide national impact is that of the Vineyard bank of Cantina Frentana.
There are elderly winemakers who are no longer able to cultivate the vineyard and have no family continuity, or have children who do another job. But those born in the countryside hardly love to separate from their land, sell it, or see it go to ruin and overrun by brambles.
For this reason we offered these people the opportunity to keep the property and give the vineyard to the cooperative. It conducts with its own staff or with the help of other winemakers. In this way, the winery’s viticultural heritage is not lost.
The native vines and biodiversity
In addition to the more traditional Abruzzo vines, Montepulciano and Trebbiano, our winegrowers cultivate other less common indigenous varieties.
Cantina Frentana has the largest extension in Abruzzo (and therefore in the world) of Cococciola vineyards, a white grape with unique characteristics, which produces fresh and elegant wines.
Pecorino, Passerina and Montonico complete the picture. The strong attention to viticultural biodiversity and its protection has led the winery to promote the “Paleovite d’Abruzzo” project, to safeguard t extremely rare European wild vine (Vitis sylvestris), of which only a few survive in the nearby oasis of the Lecceta di Torino di Sangro.
The vine has been reproduced and preserved in collection fields, in collaboration with the botanists of the Maiella National Park.
