Masi Agricola Export and Travel Retail Sales Director Piergiuseppe Torresani reflects on the company’s journey, and its ambitions for travel retail, as it celebrates its 250th anniversary.
Masi is a leading producer of Amarone and has always interpreted the values of the Venetian regions with passion, writes Piergiuseppe Torresani. The history of Masi began in 1772, date of the first harvest of the Boscaini family in the precious vineyards of the ‘Vajo dei Masi’, a valley in the heart of Valpolicella Classica. This year the winery celebrates its 250th anniversary.
Masi offers recognised expertise in the Appassimento technique, a method of drying harvested grapes, practiced since Ancient Roman times to concentrate the wine, and continuously innovated by the Masi Technical Group.
Numerous historical, archaeological and literary documents tell us that the Ancient Romans used to lay grapes picked in the hills of Verona on bamboo trellises in the cold winter months, and then produce a sweet, very concentrated nectar, celebrated by the classical authors as Reticum, later known as Acinaticum in the Middle Ages.
The tradition was passed down through the ages until the sweet version of this wine, called Recioto, was eclipsed by the dry version, the result of a longer fermentation process that transforms all sugars into alcohol, in the second half of the last century.
This is how Amarone della Valpolicella was born. There are many unique factors to this wine: Valpolicella, the hilly amphiteatrical production area between Verona and Lake Garda; the native grapes of Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara; the technique of Appassimento; and the taste profile, a combination of strength and body with balance and smoothness.
In the last 50 years, Masi and its Technical Group have contributed to the evolution of Amarone, making it a modern wine, loved and appreciated all over the world. With the production of five Amarones and three Reciotos, Masi offers the widest and most authentic range on the international market.
With volumes of around 16 million bottles Amarone is the best-selling Italian fine wine with a DOCG denomination in the world.
Masi has been historically one of the drivers of this success, having introduced Amarone to many countries from the early 1980s.
“The man who revolutionised the Valpolicella…before Sandro Boscaini, no-one had heard of the Venetian region”; “… Sandro Boscaini, apart from fine-tuning new techniques and new wines, has been a key protagonist in the creation of the modern Amarone. Sandro Boscaini has been for Amarone what Angelo Gaja has been for Barbaresco and Piero Antinori for Chianti…” Claude Langlois, Le Journal de Montréal, Canada, October 2011
In the late 1990s Masi understood the potential of wines in travel retail at a time when this was a minor, neglected category in the channel.
Amarone opened the doors to the travel retail market first in Italy but soon after in Central Europe and in the Nordics, where it became a unique market phenomenon. The prime example is the success of Masi in Oslo Airport arrivals duty free (with Travel Retail Norway), where Masi Amarone became one of the best-selling wine brands in the early 2000s.
Nectar Costasera: Amarone della Valpolicella ClassicoGrape varieties Corvina, Rondinella, Molinara (blended using Masi’s grape-drying technique). Tasting notes Look: impenetrable ruby red. Nose: baked fruit, cherries and vanilla. Palate: cherries with hints of cocoa and cinnamon. Very well balanced. Food pairing Main-course dishes, grilled or roasted red meats, game, strong cheeses or on its own at the end of a meal. |
From this success came an idea, to create a wine unique to travel retail. That led to the birth of Nectar Costasera Amarone, one of the first travel retail-exclusive wines in the world. It is a blend of Amarone with a higher percentage of Corvina, the noble grape of Valpolicella, with a more intense fruity aroma.
In the last decade Masi, through Nectar Costasera Amarone, has developed new routes in travel retail, entering Eastern Europe, South America and more recently, Asia.
The approach to Asia was very particular. Aware of the success of old vintages of French wines, Masi proposed some options for the regional market from its private selection, one of the widest in the Venetian area, the so-called Cantina Privata Boscaini (named for the family owners of Masi).
The response has been extraordinary. We are now in the difficult but fortunate situation of allocating different vintages to different partners simply to preserve our stock.
Masi’s latest proposal for Asian travel retail is the Costasera Contemporary Art Amarone. The biennial ‘Costasera Contemporary Art’ project selects a world-famous artist, from a country connected to Masi and its wines, to produce an artwork dedicated to Costasera Amarone and its label.
The artist selected for the 2021 edition is the Russian Misha Libertee (Mikhail Tsaturyan), a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose works are characterised by bright colours and textures and a deliberately commercial choice of aesthetics. The labels reproducing his work adorn a selection of bottles of Costasera 2003. We are proud to present this expression to the travel retail market.
Note: In 2021 The Moodie Davitt Report launched a regular eNewsletter series offering a curated selection of stories focused on the growing wine category in travel retail and beyond, in association with leading Italian producer Masi Agricola. As with all Moodie Davitt Report media, Wine Curated is free of charge. If you would like to be added to its mailing list (or to those for any other Moodie Davitt titles), please click here.
