Biography
By far the most significant wine of Le Ragose is the Amarone Marta Galli: it bears the name of the founder of the house. It is an uncommon wine because she was an uncommon woman. It was precisely the 77 acres of Le Ragose, purchased in 1969 on the hillsides of the Valpolicella, in the historic area of the township of Negrar, which changed the life of Marta Bortoletto. Married quite young, at 18 years of age, to oenologist Arnaldo Galli, up until then she had been a housewife with four children to raise, Sandra, Marina, Paolo, and Marco. The property was bought for weekends, but it would have been a shame to let its vineyards, uncultivated for eight years, go to seed. And so, while they cultivated the sole vineyard still producing grapes, le Sassine, a mere five acres, the Galli family began the work of restoring the vineyards to productive life and, as a direct consequence, of producing and marketing wine. Marta Galli found herself with the responsibility of a viticultural property to run: her husband, to be sure, took care of the cellar, but all the rest was her responsibility and she was forced to become an entrepreneur. The press, however, was the wine press: she was one of the first female producers in Italy and had chosen, together with her husband, to privilege quality over quantity. The Galli have always believe in this creed, using only the grapes of their own vineyards for their wines.
And if they had a Cabernet Sauvignon in their line, which testified to a certain open-mindedness, they were also among the few in the Valpolicella who had preserved in their vineyards certain minor native grape varieties of their zone: Pelara and Forselina, Dindarella and Negrara, Cagnara and Tirodola, Oseleta. Le Ragose today is an estate with almost 50 acres of vineyards, producing approximately 150,000 bottles per year. The second generation is now in charge: Paolo, with a degree in economics, has substituted his mother; Marco, with a degree in agronomy with a thesis on oenology, has substituted his father in the cellar. It is they who have added alongside the traditional Amarone Le Ragose, the unusual Amarone Marta Galli, fruit of their research. Faithful to tradition, they have not abandoned the pergolas in the vineyards or the Slavonian oak casks in the cellar; they are willing to adopt new cultivation and fermentation techniques, but only after experimentation. Only one principle remains sacred: “the quality of a wine is inseparable from its place of origin and from the people who produce it”.