Anselmo is very easy to like. Tall, charismatic, a full head of hair, and always smiling when he talks. He radiates a sense of joy and pride when he presents San Leonardo and its wine. This small winery, located at the southern end of Trentino DOC in Northeast Italy, is surrounded by seemingly inhospitable terrain, endless forestry, and roaming wildlife. But somehow, the 300-hectare estate has managed to maintain a 30-hectare vineyard making some of Italy’s most interesting and unique Bordeaux blends.

San Leonardo’s Bordeaux blend, which consists of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Carmenere, is distinctly different from the powerful and opulent Super Tuscan wines from Bolgheri. Their style leans towards a more restrained cool-climate profile that focuses on elegance, balance, and freshness, and reflects a deep understanding of their soil and vines.  

It was Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga, Anselmo’s father, who was responsible for the success and quality of San Leonardo’s wines. Carlo redefined winemaking at San Leonardo in the 1970s, and today, Anselmo is the proprietor that continues to focus on what Carlo has instilled in him and everyone else that works at San Leonardo.

Anselmo will be the first to admit that his primary responsibility “…is to maintain [San Leonardo], and [he has] changed so many things just to try to maintain the identity of the work of [his] father's.”

Grape Collective speaks with Marchese Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga about the wines of San Leonardo, and how the vision of one man could transform a small and isolated estate to produce some of the most unique and character-filled Bordeaux blend.

 

(Marchese Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga)

Lee Pai: Welcome Anselmo. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and San Leonardo the estate?

Marchese Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga: Our estate is very ancient and wasn’t always producing wines. We’re at the southern end of Trentino DOC, and it was part of a monastery from the 1215 till the end of the 1600, as a place of hospitality. It was then transformed into a private property of the church and rented out to families, which my family, the Guerrieri Gonzaga family, started to rent in 1741. We eventually bought it by the end of the century, and only then did we start to slowly make wine.

Back then, we lived off these estates, so it was filled with crops and livestock such as corn, and cows (every single estate had cows because dairy products were the base of our food). A portion of the estate was growing grapes, but the wines that were produced were very different, meant as calories for the workers; Today the wines are a hedonistic pleasure. Our director Luigino Tinelli (51 harvests with San Leonardo as of 2024) remembers when he first started working on the estate at 12 or 13 years old, his job was to prepare one litre of wine for each worker per day as they worked the estate.

It was my father, Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga, that deserves the credit for the level of wines we produce today. He graduated as a winemaker from Switzerland back in 1956, and after working around Italy, he eventually returned to the estate during the '70s and started his dream of producing great Bordeaux blends. We had international varieties in Trentino back then, such as Merlot since the 1930s. Thanks to my great-great grandfather who collected vines, we also had Pinot Noir, Riesling, and Carmenere (at the time we didn't know if it was Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc or Carmenere). After my father planted Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1970s, he was able to create the flagship wine that carries the name of our estate, and is the reason San Leonardo has become so well known around the world. 

I joined my father at San Leonardo when I was 23 years old, partially out of responsibility, after discovering his health wasn't very well (he's perfectly healthy now). At the time, I had just finished university when he asked me to join. It wasn’t a hard decision because I've always loved the countryside and the animals. Also, it’s impossible not to be fascinated about the world of wine, and you will fall in love with it if you have the patience of going through a couple of harvests. The beauty of this subject can conquer you, and now it's my 23rd harvest this year.

 

(From left to right: Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga, Carlo Guerrieri Gonzaga, Luigino Tinelli)

How did your father arrive at this passion for Bordeaux blends and Cabernet Sauvignon?

I hope my father's not going to read this because he's going to get angry!

My father was a very bad student at school during his early years, but my grandfather was a strict man who had been through World War I and lived all his life under a king, and could not accept a son who's not perfect at school. He sent my father to a monk school in Switzerland at first, then sent him to study winemaking and oenology, a bizarre choice at the time. This was in 1956, and nobody from my father’s background was studying at wine schools in Italy at the time. But this really demonstrated the passion my grandfather had for wine, and fortunately my father also discovered this to be his great passion.

Upon graduation, my father didn’t immediately return home to work for my grandfather because they had just hired a young winemaker. So instead, my father went to Tuscany and ended up at Tenuta San Guido of the Marchese Incisa family. My father started working beside Mario Incisa, who was the owner at that time, as a cellar boy. Mario was a real countryside gentleman, was very knowledgeable about wine, and was already starting to create the first approaches of the now famous ‘Sassicaia’.

Mario was very fond of my father because not only did he have the knowledge about wine, he was one of the few youngsters who was passionate about both the drinking AND making of the wine. So I would say that Marchese Incisa was the man who gave my father this passion and vision, and my father transported this vision back to San Leonardo. At the time, we were making blends of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, so when my father introduced Cabernet Sauvignon in 1982 and created the flagship ‘San Leonardo’ blend, our trajectory to what we are today started.

Can you walk us through the different wines from San Leonardo?

So, a little bit of background: San Leonardo is divided between the original estate (which is still inside the walls of the ancient monastery), which is dedicated to red grapes, and plots outside of our estate. In the 1980s, my father took out the white grapes within the original estate because he was focused only on the reds, believing there were no real white wines to highlight.

We have four reds: 'San Leonardo', 'Terre', 'Villa Gresti', and the single varietal Carmenere.

'Terre' is our second wine, a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, and 10% Carmenere. The objective of the second wine is to tell you the story of our wines and our estate. It is a very straightforward wine without complexity, with great freshness and easy to drink. 'Terre' came about in 2005 when we planted younger vines of Cabernet Sauvignon but did not want to use for the top wine, 'San Leonardo'.

The 'Villa Gresti' positions itself more or less in the middle. It's a very important wine in the sense that it comes from a unique hill in the estate, it's mostly based on Merlot (60%), with 30% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Carmenere. This wine is made in the same identical way as 'San Leonardo', the vinification has the exact same standard, and we are not adapting or doing different things for each wine. The 'Villa Gresti' is aged for 18 months in tonneaux oak, 1/3 of which is new. The 'Terre' on the other hand is aged in concrete vats and old oak barrels (50/50).

The 'Carmenere' is a single varietal wine. The vines are mostly pergola trained, and go through the same vinification and oak ageing as the 'San Leonardo'. It really is the same wine that is blended into the 'San Leonardo', except it’s bottled on its own.

And then finally we have the 'San Leonardo', which has the same vinification and blend since 1982: 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Carmenere, 10% Merlot. It is aged for 20 to 24 months depending on the character and power of the wine, and use 20 to 25% new oak aging. We're very careful, since oak is essential, especially on these varieties, but we don't want it to be a detached element of the wine. All of our wines are on the delicate side, we don't try to create a wine that is muscular, heavily extracted, and has lots of oak. We try to make very refined wines of great balance and harmony. To me, I'm disgusted when I feel intense wood in red wines, it's really something that doesn't attract me at all.

We do not use any commercial yeast and instead rely on spontaneous fermentation. Our method involves a ‘Pied du Cuvee’, starting with a first fermentation in tonneaux oak barrels for different grapes. Then throughout the harvest as we bring in new grapes, we use the fermenting wine as a starter for all the subsequent wines so that it starts very fast and carbon dioxide is developed quickly, allowing us to not need very much sulfites and be fully organic in the cellar. We go through a short maceration, 12 to 14 days, to not extract too much. We want to keep our greener and tannic characters, and try to maintain the silky structure in the mouth. We do manual pump over every single day, just trying to water the cap with the wine instead of a systematic approach. We believe this not so precise technique delivers uniqueness to our wines, and it is important that the wine comes out having a character.

Everything we do, selection of our vines, indigenous yeast, manual pump over, very delicate filtering, is to try to give identity to all our wines, and create wines that are fresh and easy to drink. Every wine has to express itself, and it is up to us to say if it's going to go in the 'Terre', 'Villa Gresti', 'San Leonardo', 'Carmenere'. We know there are certain fields that produce the best grapes, and 99% of the time these wines go into the 'San Leonardo', but we always have to taste, you don't just sit there and think. 

It's wonderful, you start off very early in the morning tasting in a civilized and serious way, and then by 12 o'clock you end up with a big BIG smile on your face. We make the wine as we would like it, because the world is full of good wines, so you have to make something that you're actually proud of and you like very much.

How about your other wines?

After I joined in 2001, I wanted to create a white wine, so I went to the border at Alto Adige with Carlo Ferrini, our winemaker since 1999, to find plots. We teamed up with a local family around the northern part of the region to select the fields, since they knew much better than us and had more experience. We started with two hectares and gradually grew to a larger project. This was where 'Vette', our Sauvignon Blanc, was created. Vette in Italian means the peaks of the mountains, and it's a lovely, delicate, very fresh wine that's low in alcohol (12.5%).

After a few years, we created the 'Riesling', which we make around 5,000 to 6,000 bottles a year as well. It's a peculiar Riesling because it is aged in Austrian oak tonneaux barrels. I am a great fan of it because I like a touch of oak in white wines in the sense that I like to feel the oak element.

We started to make a rosè a few years ago, with Lagrein grapes we grow at San Leonardo. The wine is called 'Gemma', dedicated to my great-grandmother. She was a war hero, saving nearly 10,000 lives from the concentration camps in Russia back then. I would love to tell her story, but that's a long story for another day.

Lastly, we make two lovely grappas, but we do not distill them on the estate, instead we send them to a distillery outside because it's an art form that we are not good at.

Can you talk more about the difference your father brought to create ‘San Leonardo’?

In the past, around the 1950s, we bottled single varietal such as the Merlot, while 'San Leonardo' wine was just the different grapes co-fermenting, a typical practice my grandfather followed. When my father took over, he decided to vinify and mature each variety separately before blending and bottling. We ferment all of our red wines in small concrete vats, with every field (and variety) having its own vat. This allows the different varieties the opportunity to express themselves.  

This methodical approach was the revolution my father established at San Leonardo in 1982, and created the wine we know today.

A unique variety that you guys have is Carmenere. How did that come about?

It is an interesting story similar to Chile. Most of the Carmenere arrived in Italy around 1946 and 1947, right after the war. Remember both the war and phylloxera had destroyed a lot of vineyards in Italy at the time, so there was a need to replant a lot of vines in those days. We were receiving a lot of grapes that were sold as Cabernet Franc. Since there was very little graphic reference back then, everyone including us thought they were Cabernet Franc.

(Carmenere grapes)

Around 1989 or '88, my father wanted to grow more Cabernet Franc because he felt that this wine was giving a distinctive taste and character to the wines. So he bought vines from some of the best growers in France, but grew a little suspicious after the first year. By the second year, he knew there was something wrong because they were completely different from the Cabernet Franc that were already at the estate. The berry sizes were different (Carmenere has berries the size of cherries, while Cabernet Franc has little berries), and the leaves were different in the autumn as well (Carmenere leaves are flaming red while Cabernet Franc leaves turn yellow / brownish). So when he asked a very well known professor of viticulture to confirm, my father found out he had Carmenere.

It was rare to have discovered it back in the day, and many people never knew they had it because they just planted new varieties later on since it was not an easy grape to grow. To make wine from Carmenere that is complex, you need to study it, it's not something that's easy. Our Carmenere is not made every vintage, and depending on the generosity of the vintage we maybe get between 5,000 and 7,000 bottles. It is essentially the same Carmenere you find in the San Leonardo cuvee that is made separately as a single varietal wine.

I bottled the Carmenere secretly from my father in 2007 at first because he preferred the classic approach of having only two or three wines and didn’t want new wines. But I was young and wanted to do something new, so our director Luigino helped me to bottle 1,724 magnums of the Carmenere in secret and hide them from my father for a long time. I finally went to my father one day with the bottle all wrapped up. I told him it was a French wine I bought for him from Paris but he had to taste it blind. I still remember his seemingly confused expression when tasting it: "It's very good, but it tastes like our Carmenere?"

Of course he was absolutely correct, so I revealed the bottle, with a label I had designed using my great, great, great-grandfather's handwriting of the word Carmenere. The label is still used today, and the wine continues to fascinate me.

Your family has this motto 'the earth is the soul of our work'. What does that mean to you?

This was a phrase that I sort of created for my father. Although he never said it, this was something that he embodied and taught me. He taught me the love and understanding that he has for nature, and I’d say he's capable of growing a flower on a stone. His relationship with animals as well, such as with his dog, is just amazing, and he talks to animals all the time.

My father is 86 now and really is a lovely man to have learnt from. So I synthesized all of this into a phrase because it's really what my father taught not just me but all the young people of the estate, who then really devote themselves to this approach.

You can see it from our results as well. In the past, our production volume was quite small, around 120,000 to 150,000 bottles, today it is up to around 300,000 bottles. This is because I cleared a lot of fields in the woods these last 20 years, which have really great virgin soils that chemicals have never been used on. We are fully organic, adopted a lot of the biodynamics practices, are certified biodiversity friends, certified now as a sustainable winery with equality. So the soil has been a central part of our work as we evolve. I would say in the 1980s there was a lot of attention in the cellar, in the 2000s there was a lot of attention on the vines (learning to prune properly), and today we are concentrating more and more on the soil and what's underneath the vine, the roots and how to make it really expressed in the best possible way.

With this emphasis on biodiversity and treating soils the right way, have you seen San Leonardo's wine evolve in the direction you imagined?

Definitely. We’ve made a lot of changes at San Leonardo, but to me, our first big change was introducing the new pruning system from Marco Simonit and Pierpaolo Sirch, founders of the “gentle pruning” method. They have gone back to our older techniques while mixing with some modern ones. Not everything that is old is good, and we don't want to be romantic about nature. Although nature is beautiful to our eyes, it is also real, full stop. You have to always check if your understanding is correct by seeing how it reacts on the vines.

The new pruning system helped us to unify the dimensions of the vine branches, and got more evenly ripened grapes. A vine is simply a pipe full of water, and if one of the knots it's too tight, the water won’t be evenly distributed, resulting in grape bunches that don’t ripen evenly. The difference is significant. In the past we would have greener grapes going into the wines, so although this allowed for a very interesting development as it aged, the wines were hard to appreciate young. From 2004 onwards, the wines were developing more evenly and ready to drink much earlier than in the past.

Organic farming has helped us a lot, although being organic does not necessarily equal healthier products (neither does sustainable farming). I would say that organic farming is not so great when the weather conditions are bad, because you end up treating the vines more often, and use the tractor much more. 

But also, although we try to use a little as possible, chemical products are not the devil, and honestly, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for chemistry. I am proud that we have transformed into an organic estate, and I'm going to continue to see how we can improve. I'm always looking to see what 's going on in the industry, because I don’t think the protocol today is 100% perfect. What I can say is that the wines today have more life in them to my palate, so this is a good thing, or at the very least we are not on the wrong path.

 

(San Leonardo estate in the autumn)

You've worked with your father for a significant period of time, and he has had such an influence on you. Do you think you sort of had some influence on him as well after all these years?

Obviously as father and son, it's not always easy. I will always thank my father for showing me his immense love for nature. He's not the kind of person who tells you what you should do, you have to observe his actions in order to learn; I must add that Carlo Ferini has also influenced me a lot as well. From 2001 until 2015, we worked very closely with my father. And then my father very kindly, as part of his vision for continuity, started stepping back from the estate.

I think it was painful for him as well. But it's a small estate, and we have a saying in Italy that when you have two roosters in the same place, they always end up fighting. But even though he has stepped back, we still see each other regularly; We see each other at dinner most of the week because we sleep in the same house. I still ask for his opinions for the wines at times, and we would taste together. In the end, it is thanks to him that we are here today to talk about great wines. My role is to maintain this, and I have changed so many things just to try to maintain the identity of the work of my father's.

The wines of San Leonardo today are a creation from the team, I can never achieve all of this without Carlo, Luigino, Antonio, and the people of the estate. I have a very young and lovely, lovely team, I'm very happy and feel very rewarded to work with them. It's great fun as well.

(The San Leonardo team)

So, to come back to your question, I think we have influenced each other very much. Of course, me being from a modern generation, I had this vision with organic and biodynamic practices, while for someone that's 80 years old it's not that easy to change methods that have historically given great results. It comes down to growing our understanding on how to improve our practices. Just look at our estate, in the past we were using horrifying chemicals to maintain the crop, but it was still beautiful. Now with more natural farming practices it is even more stunning. I think we just have more understanding, because we have had the chance to read, talk to people, confront ourselves, and learn more. That's the point, the more you go around, the more you talk with people who are better than you, the we get influenced or inspired to go back home do better.

Do you see any sort of relationship between San Leonardo and the Super Tuscan movement?

I think we are very different. I have great respect for Bolgheri, especially the Incisa family and Antinori family. Bolgheri has become what it is today firstly thanks to them. But their Bordeaux blend is more Mediterranean, while ours is more like an Alpine blend. The ways we cultivate the vines are very different, and we have different grape selection criteria – instead of super polished wines, we try to find this balance with elegance and delicate flavors. Don't get me wrong, I love Bolgheri wines, it's a great comparison for us, but we are not similar even though we share the same varieties and the same passion.

Bolgheri is a young wine region compared to other regions around Italy, and I see so many growers who do the same things together and are always exchanging opinions. So there is this sense of united objective, which is very beautiful and I envy it in a nice way. Where we are, we are quite unique, not that we are better or worse, but just simply a little different from everyone else, and so we're a little alone.

Outside of drinking San Leonardo's wines, which I believe you obviously do drink a lot of, what are other wines that you enjoy?

Many! I'm a great fan of both the red and whites wines of Etna. The Carricante that Calo Ferrini makes on Etna is just unbelievable and is one of my very favorite wines. I like the wines of Abruzzo, such as Trebbiano from Valentini and other producers. I'm a fan of Sangiovese, and like Chianti very much. My favorite Chianti is from Pergole Torte. It's not a typical Chianti, and remains sort of a myth in Italy. I would say it is very similar to San Leonardo in terms of that vision of being handcraft, old school, very classic without too much use of technology.

Of course I love Barolo and Barbaresco. But, because I prefer Nebbiolo that's smooth and not too tannic, I love the Nebbiolo from Valtellina. Spumante in Italy is wonderful, such as those from Franciacorta. But in our region there are some extraordinary Spumante as well, such as Trentodoc, a revolution in Trentino. Trentodoc has allowed Trentino to finally find its real soul in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and these bubbles come out in an extraordinary way with great freshness. Looking into the future, it is the region I think will grow the most in terms of high-level sparkling wines of Italy.

Last question. Which vintages do you enjoy most? The vintage where everything went perfectly? Or the challenging vintages where you still managed to make wine despite everything that could go wrong happened? 

The difficult vintages give you the greatest satisfaction, because every time you taste them, you cannot believe something came out so well from such difficult condition. Take 2003 for example, it's still a wine which is extraordinary today. If you don't look at the vintage, the freshness of it does not taste like it's from 2003. It was my father who actually saved the vintage, because during harvest, he sent us to pick up all the green grapes that we could find to improve acidity, which was lacking at the time. And today, the wine is still fantastic.

The vintage 2017 was also a disastrous harvest, we had hail three separate times, and then one of the vats cracked and we lost another 30% of the wine. But when I taste the wine, I'm always very satisfied with the outcome.

But then the wines from 2019 are very different. 2019 is the most recent vintage that we made. As wine producers, we always think the best wine is the next vintage. But apart from that, 2019 is one of those harvests that was such a joy to make. It was just so easy, and when it's that way, the wine just comes out well, like the son of sunlight. When you have very sunny vintages, not too hot, but sunny and luminous, well then you get great wines.