From the Arches of Tenuta Roveglia to the Circle of Time at Selva Capuzza
After a night wrapped in the soft hush of Desenzano del Garda, the morning light pulled us south along quiet country roads to Pozzolengo and Tenuta Roveglia – 120 hectares of vines, stories, and famously stubborn clay that have been making wine since the early 1400s. The estate was reborn in the early 1900s by Swiss immigrant Federico Zweifel, but today it is the three Azzone sisters – Sara, Vanessa, and the irrepressible Babettli – who are writing the most vibrant chapter yet.
From the moment Babettli greets you with that knowing smile, you feel like you’ve been let in on a wonderful secret. Within minutes she quotes her father’s lifelong creed: “We need to promote the dream – Lugana – and not the winery.” He used to pedal from trattoria to trattoria with sample bottles strapped to his bicycle until the world finally sat up and listened. That same generous, collaborative spirit still pulses through every corner of Roveglia.
It’s impossible to miss. Step into the foyer and you’re immediately enveloped by the “family wall” – a sprawling, joyful collage not just of the three sisters, but of every facet of the team – the office, the tractor driver, the seasonal picker, every cellar hand who has ever worked a harvest here. “They are Roveglia,” Babettli says, tapping a faded photo of a man who started at fourteen. “We don’t separate blood from chosen family.”
Babettli herself is a whirlwind of passions. Trained as an HR specialist, she’s also a self-taught architect and an obsessive collector of antique telephones. Her office feels like a tiny museum of Bakelite rotaries and candy-apple-red Ericofons. “Each one has its own voice,” she murmurs, cradling a 1930s Siemens like a baby bird, “exactly like old vines.”
That love of distinctive voices brought us straight out to the vineyard. She scoops up a fistful of the heavy white clay. “Wet, it’s glue. Dry, it’s stone.” Fifty-five-year-old roots barely reach five metres deep, spreading instead in a desperate spiderweb just to survive. “Survival mode,” she grins, “makes the wine more interesting.”
All that character needed a worthy home, so Babettli designed one. To reach the new tasting room you descend a stone staircase behind a monumental door of reclaimed wood and iron – every plank salvaged from centuries-old barns and presses. “Nothing here is wasted,” she whispers, pushing it open like a secret.
What waits below is pure, breath-stealing magic: a six-metre-deep golden cathedral of hand-built brick arches, no two alike, each curve sketched by Babettli herself and shaped by eye to carry the exact weight above. Hidden lights make the rosy terracotta glow, and the cool air is thick with the scent of earth and sleeping wine.
Yet the true soul of the estate lives upstairs in the 16th-century Cascina Roveglia farmhouse. Thick limestone-and-clay walls – the very same moraine that gives Lugana its mineral snap – keep it cool in summer and cosy in winter. Ancient chestnut beams that once held grain now frame intimate tastings; pink Veronese rose marble floors shimmer beneath humble arches originally built for oxen, not ostentation. The former stable has become the coziest tasting room imaginable: a scarred oak table, a fireplace blackened by five centuries of smoke, family photos watching over us, and the low hum of sleek steel tanks just next door. At one point Babettli disappears for a moment and returns cradling their very first commercial vintage – 1989 – one of only twelve bottles left in the world.
And then, beneath those glowing arches, the wines spoke for themselves.
– Lugana Spumante Brut: A silver river of pinpoint bubbles carrying crisp green apple, spring flowers, and warm brioche. Dry, electric, celebratory.
– Limne Lugana DOC: So pale it flashes green at the rim. Lime blossom, white peach fuzz, wet river stones – pure Garda breeze in a glass.
– Vigne di Filiberto Lugana DOC: Ripe yellow plum, roasted almond, a twist of lemon confit, and a saline snap that makes your mouth water again and again.
– Riserva Vigne di Catullo Lugana DOC 2012 – Cork vs Screwcap: Deep, luminous gold. The nose explodes: candied orange, acacia honey, toasted hazelnut, smoky minerals. Velvety, almost chewy, then a blade of acidity lifts ginger biscuit and sea salt into an endless, resonant finish. The cork bottle was tired and mushroomy; the screw-cap version still singing with lemon peel and almond blossom. “Dad made the switch in 2007,” she laughs. “Everyone thought he was crazy. Sales tripled the next year.”
– Bonus: 2021 Late-Harvest VT : Golden like November sun, swirling with candied ginger, toasted walnut, and river-stone freshness. 14 g/L of honeyed sweetness balanced by acidity so bright your jaw tingles. “A me-wine,” Babettli declares, a wine that can last an hour.
We left Roveglia with hearts full and Babettli’s parting words ringing in our ears: “Now go taste the other side of the dream.” So we pointed the car just a few kilometres east, toward the hills of San Martino della Battaglia and Podere Selva Capuzza – another family, another century-old cascina, another unforgettable chapter of Lugana waiting to be uncorked.
We left Roveglia with hearts full, and Babettli’s parting words ringing in our ears: “Now go taste the other side of the dream.” So we pointed the car just a few kilometres east, toward the hills of San Martino della Battaglia and Podere Selva Capuzza – another family, another century-old cascina, another unforgettable chapter of Lugana waiting to be uncorked.
We didn’t taste in a cellar or a sleek tasting room – we tasted right where the magic happens, among the vines of the San Biagio vineyard at Podere Selva Capuzza, in the heart of the Lugana DOC on the gentle morainic hills of San Martino del Garda, just a few kilometres south of magnificent Lake Garda itself.
Glasses balanced on an old wooden table facing the rows, late-afternoon sun slanting golden across the landscape, a soft Garda breeze carrying the scent of distant lake water and wild fennel. That’s where Luca Formentini, fourth-generation guardian of this 50-hectare estate that produces 350,000 bottles a year, unfolded the family’s story and philosophy as naturally as the vines themselves unfurl their leaves each spring – a quiet, almost monastic devotion to letting the native Turbiana grape speak purely and unadorned from this unique cascade of glacial slopes.
Luca greets you with the calm of someone who knows the earth is patient. “With Lugana, time is a friend,” he says, pouring the just-bottled 2024 Lugana straight from tank. It’s electric—green apple, almond blossom, wet stone—pure morning light in a glass. Then he reaches for the 2024 Selva Capuzza, the single-vineyard cru from the oldest parcels, and you instantly taste why he refuses to bottle anything early: the wine keeps unspooling in the glass—citrus peel, white peach, a saline whisper—like sunrise gradually flooding the lake.
The labels, designed 15 years ago, are circles upon circles. “Tree rings,” Luca explains, gesturing toward a massive old oak at the edge of the vineyard. “Time in nature.” Each wine has its own chapter written in those rings: the entry-level Lugana shows open circles with tiny spheres rising from the bottom left, a new sun; the Lugana Silver (from 45-year-old vines) has every gap perfectly filled, the quiet confidence of maturity; the clay-red Menasasso circle is dense and almost austere, already projecting twenty, thirty years into the future.
We walk the rows together. Luca kicks a fist-sized morainic stone and grins. “Moving stones—the earth is still moving.” These rocks, dragged here by glaciers 15,000 years ago, force the roots deep and gift the wines their unmistakable mineral backbone. The family has been farming this land since the early 1900s, still using their grandfather’s raw cement tanks (“they breathe just enough,” Luca says), powering the entire cantina with solar panels, and for the last twenty years avoiding pesticides entirely—relying instead on sexual confusion pheromones that leave the beneficial insects untouched. Sustainability here isn’t marketing; it’s common sense if you want your grandchildren to keep doing this.
And then there are the experiments—because Luca is quietly restless.
In 2022 he set aside one tank for a completely natural Turbiana: no selected yeasts, no sulfur, no filtration, nothing. The fermentation stalled. Most winemakers would reach for a cultured yeast and move on. Luca split the tank 50/50. Half was bottled under crown cap for secondary fermentation (Nulla 2022-1, a vibrant pét-nat, only 1,200 bottles) and half was left to finish quietly in a smaller tank (Nulla 2022-2, unfiltered, slightly hazy, 1,300 bottles). “We learn more from the ones that don’t go as planned,” he laughs, popping a crown cap with a satisfying hiss. The sparkling version dances with lemon curd, brioche, and a chalky grip; the still one is wild, sea-spray salty, almost Chablis-meets-Jura profound.
History is literally underfoot. A two-minute stroll from our tasting table stands San Torino, the oldest church south of Lake Garda—pre-Romanesque, built just after the year 1000 as a resting place for Benedictine pilgrims walking the Via Francigena to Rome. The silence inside those ancient walls feels exactly like the silence that falls over a table when someone opens a ten-year-old Menasasso.
Speaking of which… aperitivo o’clock. Luca uncorks the Hirundo Metodo Classico 2018—100 % Turbiana, 60 months on lees, zero dosage—and the tiny, persistent bubbles carry notes of brioche, hazelnut, and lake breeze. We roll up our sleeves for a hands-on cooking class with chef Cinzia, who hands each of us a personalized apron (mine reads “Nonna in Training – Property of Selva Capuzza”). Immediate controversy: Team Pavesini or Team Savoiardi for the strawberry tiramisu we’re about to assemble? Battle lines are drawn. Next come feather-light potato gnocchi, ridged by thumb on a wooden board, then tossed in a bright tomato sauce and showered with crispy sage leaves fried in brown butter that smells like pure joy.
As the sun melts behind the vines, Luca disappears into the cellar and returns with two treasures: Selva Capuzza 2015, still shockingly fresh, saffron, dried apricot, and a creamy richness that defies its age; then the 2011 Menasasso—deep gold verging on amber, truffle honey, roasted almonds, wet stones, and a finish that refuses to quit. We sit in reverent silence for a full minute, which, for a group of wine enthusiasts, is the equivalent of a standing ovation.
Podere Selva Capuzza has eleven gorgeous rooms above the cantina and restaurant (sleeps about 40 if you bring friends or family). I’m already plotting my return—maybe for harvest, maybe in ten years to drink the 2024s next to the 2011s while Luca kicks another stone and smiles about how the earth is still moving.
If you love wine that tastes like a place, food that tastes like love, and places that feel like family after one golden afternoon, cancel whatever else you had planned and come here. Bring an empty suitcase. And maybe an extra day or three, because leaving is the hardest part.
Next – Parte 2 Desenzano’s port for a boat trip to the historic center of Sirmione and tour of Grotte di Catullo, followed by winery dinner at La Rucola 2.0.