Tenuta di Corbara

About Winery and Wines

Among the families of nobile origin that in feudal times settled in the territory to the right of the Tiber river, Montemarte family was undoubtedly one of the most important ones, administring the areas east of Orvieto and towards Todi from their castles of Montemarte and Corbara.In the land register of the contado of 1292, Corbara was listed as a castrum in the rural parish of Santa Maria da Stiolo, coinciding in good part with the present estate of Corbara at the spot where Paglia and Tiber rivers meet. The habitual residence of the Counts of Corbara was the castle itself,even though it was listed as a municipal territory at least up to the seventeenth century. There was in fact the need of personal supervision for their vast agrarian holdings,which were gradually turning into modern farms, abreast of the times. At the end of the nineteenth century, the estate of Corbara became property of the Banca Romana. In 1889/90 the bank financed excavations that brought to light the Roman port of Pagliano, in opus reticulatum, located at the confluence of the two rivers named above. this archaeological site gained great importance, in history, for commercial and economic relations between Rome and the immediate hinterland. Thanks to continuing studies, protection and restoration of the structures this site can now be visited. The Azienda Agricola Castello di Corbara as it is now mirrors faithfully the new comprehensive program of the entire range of activities whole-heartedly undertaken by the entrepreneurial group that bought the property in 1997. The underlying concepts of this new management include the inherent need to salvage values such as the respect of the territory, whose authenticity is always reflected by every single wine produced.

The estate is endowed with a modern wine cellar designed and built for precision vinification. The use of the best technology available must be considered as a support to an extremely simple and genuine vinification, not as technological tenacity. The aim is in fact to fully respect the high quality of the grapes and exalt the peculiar features of each variety. The harvest is done on the estate’s fields only, carefully monitored in every phenological phase and managed in order to emphasize the typical qualities of each grape variety, so as to transfer to the final product the most faithful territorial imprint. In this respect, it must be pointed out that the harvest is done by hand, paying great attention in choosing the right moment of maturation of the grapes and in picking only the best bunches. This strict selection also takes place when the grapes are put onto the conveyor belt, before being processed inside the cellar. The harvest takes place in the cooler hours of the day, in order to avoid every sort of unwanted fermentation process. The numerous clones of the different grapevines, separated by vineyard fields, are individually vinified, and only at the end of this process the final blending takes place. Lastly, the wine cellar is proud to own a special aging room, with controlled humidity and temperature. Here you find wooden barrels used for aging the wines coming from the oldest vineyards.