Wine making

Wine quality begins in the vineyard: this is why Giordano staff pays the utmost attention to the wine-growing process.

Giordano’s team of wine makers selects the grapes from Italy’s most illustrious wine regions. The range of wines has been further widened, by adding to the classical wines from Piedmont, some of the most important Italian products, with a particular focus on the wines from Southern Italy.

This wide range includes the celebrated wines from Piedmont just mentioned, from the Veneto to the north of Venice; from the rolling Tuscan countryside; from the rugged seaside Abruzzo; from Apulia, a zone that has now become a leading quality producer, and from the sun drenched island of Sicily, source of some of Italy’s most intriguing fine wines.

About Apulia in particular, GiordanoVini has always believed in the wine growing and production potential of the Apulia region, in the heel of the Italian peninsula. This potential has been revealed recently, both at a national and international level. Giordano has made a significant investment starting years ago, by purchasing and equipping a winery in Torricella, in the Salento area. A district famous for the Primitivo di Manduria, a widely appreciated wine from the same grape that is known as Zinfandel in the USA. Our investment is the synergy of the south’s wine making potential, with the perfect growing climate and with Giordano’s technology and wine making skills.

After all the due care in the vineyard, the wine’s organoleptic features (all those particular aroma and flavour characteristics that make each wine unique) are brought out during the very delicate phase of wine-making. To this purpose, Giordano Company has invested big sums in wine technology and is now proud of its winery, one of the most modern and well-equipped in Italy.

The whole cycle, from grape crushing to fermentation, is performed with the help of stainless steel facilities, to guarantee the highest degree of hygiene. The soft pressing plant allows a crush at a pressure below 0.9 atmosphere. The red wine vinification in horizontal refrigerated tanks permits the delicate colour extraction from skins. White wines are cold fermented to preserve the primary fruit aromas. During fermentation, the must temperature is continuously kept under control in each tank. Wine drawing off, rackings and conservation occur in stainless steel tanks at controlled temperature, with an overall capacity of 210,000 hectolitres (160,000 in Valle Talloria and 50,000 in Torricella).

Giordano is endowed with very modern laboratory facilities for monitoring the fermentation, as well as for all chemical, physical and microbiological checks, with the aim of constantly and strictly keeping the quality of wine under control. A dedicated tasting room has been created to enable each wine to be tasted by an expert panel throughout every stage of production: from vinification and ageing, all the way to the final blending.

At Giordano, progress always proceeds in strict respect of tradition: to ripen and age wines with the noblest features, oak barrels of different capacities remain essential. These are not mere containers but instruments carefully used to enhance every aspect of the wines Giordano deems ageworthy.
In compliance with the international market trends, Giordano has directed its attention to 225 litre oak barriques. At present the winery owns more than 2,000 of small barrels, which lie in the wide area of the ancient part of the winery, where the red wines with great ageing potential rest. In the cosiest and most shielded part of the winery, you can find the so called “infernot”, a narrow passage which hosts, sheltered from any source of light, the bottles of the most precious stocks, some of which are more than 50 years old.

The Company has two modern bottling lines. The main one has got a service capacity of 12,000 bottles/h, while the second bottling line can run small standardised productions with a big product-range flexibility. The hourly productivity has been cut off (maximum 6,000 bottles/h) to combine different glass sizes, corks and labels. Only new bottles previously washed and drained are used, while the wine coming from the winery undergoes a sterilised micro-filtering process using a tangential system before being transferred into the isobaric filler. The bottle pre-washing, filling and corking phases are performed in a positive-pressure white room, to guarantee the utmost hygiene.

Some sensors, which are located in different points of the bottling line, detect any possible discrepancies in the packaged product. Once the bottles come to the end of the bottling line, they can either be packaged in cases or placed on pallets, according to the different business needs. The electronic check of the production cycle, including 3 supervisors, always ensures the highest quality standar