Vinification
The grapes come from old vineyards in the Bellinzona Ronchi. Made by Bordeaux-style winemaking, with long alcoholic fermentation and maceration, the wine is then aged in barriques. Suitable for long storage, it goes well with red meats, braised meats, roasts, game and savory cheeses.

Color
Intense ruby red.

Perfume
Berry and spicy with elegant roasted notes.

Taste
Dry, ample and well-structured, it has a complex and enveloping fruity and vanilla flavor with lingering final sensations.

The history of our company begins in 1880, twenty-six years before the first Merlot vines imported from the lands of Bordeaux were planted in Ticino.

Those were the years when phylloxera, the deadly vine pest, was raging in Europe. But they were also the years, those at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which the foundations for modern viticulture were being laid in Ticino, thanks in part to the creation of the Ambulant Chair of Agriculture: too many plantations of American grapes were being uprooted, replacing them with native varieties, new grape varieties were being experimented with-such as Merlot, in fact-, the first social wine cellars were being established…..

It was in this historical context that the Chiodi company was founded in Ascona, which today-along with Carlevaro of Bellinzona, acquired in 2009-is one of Ticino’s leading companies in the production and trade of wines and spirits. Originally, the Chiodi family brewed beer, resold imported wine from Italy, and operated the historic and eponymous Grotto that stood by the lake in the Moscia area between Ascona and Porto Ronco.