Meet Manaresi at Italian Wine Fest 2024

Emilia Romagna is the land of food: parmigiano cheese and prosciutto ham have helped the region gain international recognition, particularly as of late. Spend a year in Bologna like I (Nick Mucci, Importer) have and you learn the best ways to eat and pair such delicacies. You will most likely find yourself diving nightly into aperitivi so full of meats and cheeses that you won’t have room for dinner. At a place called Osteria del Sole in the heart of Bologna, I fell in love with a type of wine native to the surrounding hills. I had honestly never heard of it before moving to Bologna from Rome in 2011. The wine was called Pignoletto, which comes in sparkling and still versions, and is the perfect companion (next to a Lambrusco) to an Italian aperitivo. During my year there I made it a mission to find a great Pignoletto that I could eventually introduce into the American market.

This is where Donatella Agostoni and Fabio Bottonelli from Manaresi come in. They are the husband and wife team behind some of the best Pignolettos I’ve tasted in the Colli Bolognesi (a wine producing area surrounding the city of Bologna). Most Pignoletto production happens southwest of the city in towns like Zola Predosa, where Manaresi is located. This area is known for sparkling wine production and also some of the finest expressions of Cabernet Sauvignon in all of Italy.

Manaresi is named after a famous artist Paolo Manaresi, whose works can be found in Bologna, particularly in the “Accademia delle Belle Arti” right downtown. In the late 80s, Manaresi’s daughter bought adjacent land to her family’s property and from there, the long process of converting the land to vineyards started. In 2009, they produced their first wines with labels inspired by the artist himself.

On my first visit to “Bella Vista”, the hill on which the winery stands, it was easy to see why Donatella’s mother chose this site. With views as far as the Alps on a clear day and glimpses of Bologna, it seems unjust that we rarely hear anything about these beautiful hills. That is because they are so often overshadowed by nearby Tuscany.

-Nick Mucci

The Italian Wine Festival is sponsored in part by