CANTINA BELISARIO

The Cantina Belisario s.a.c. has been operating in the wine industry since 1971.

The Board of Directors is constituted by 15 members and is preside over Mr. Antonio Centocanti, Vice-President Mr. Eolo Farroni. In 2004, the cooperative amended its Articles of Association in order to align it with the rules on Organizzazioni dei Produttori.

The cooperative associates (to 31.01.2018) n. 171 members for an area cultivated under specialized vine of 335 hectares, located on the eight municipalities of the Alta Vallesina covered by the DOC Verdicchio di Matelica and others covered by the DOC Colli Maceratesi. The production potential is entirely addressed to the production of DOC, DOCG and IGT quality wines.

Since 2004, the cooperative has obtained the process and product certification under the UNI EN ISO 9001 Vision legislation. The cooperative owns 85 hectares of vineyards as corporate assets divided into three different companies. It also provides a wine-growing service to members (with more than 15 qualified employees, of which 3 expert technical land surveyors), for the corporate belief that every wine is born from a specific wine-making project, therefore it is essential to know and manage the entire supply chain in order to limit project errors.

The majority of the grapes delivered are suitable for the production of the DOC Verdicchio di Matelica and DOCG Riserva, of which the Belisario is the largest producer. It is the largest winery in the province of Macerata and is one of the first regional producers of Verdicchio Riserva DOCG. The company is certified ISO 9001 and for the production of organic wines (Verdicchio di Matelica, Colli Maceratesi Rosso DOC). It is on the market with two brands: Belisario for the Horeca market distributed in Italy by Rinaldi with 110 market agents, and Poggio alle Rondini for large scale distribution directly managed with internal professionalism as well as the foreign market where it is present in 25 Countries; the Belisario also has four wine shops where, in addition to Belisario wines, offers up to 1200 national and international labels.

The company has modern facilities grown for the realization of a method of winemaking called “reduced”, for the criomaceration, with cleaning techniques of grape must for both static decantation and flotation. All stainless steel tanks are thermo-controlled, just like the storage bottles warehouse. The packaging consists of two bottling lines, one for containers for large-scale distribution and the other for 0.75, 1.5, 0.375 litres bottles.

The company also produces sparkling wines with three closed tanks of 50 hl: Verdicchio di Matelica DOC sparkling wine, Rosato Spumante and Spumante Dolce wine. The Belisario is one of the Marche’s wineries with the highest number of awards in the thematic guides, for over 10 years with three Bicchieri nella Guida Gambero Rosso; the Cambrugiano Verdicchio di Matelica Riserva DOCG label was one of the region’s most awarded wines and is produced since the 1988 harvest.

It has always participated in research projects: in 1988 hosted the first industrial winemaking with the technique of criomaceration and then the technique of hyper-oxygenation of grape must in collaboration with the Università di Bologna; with Assam participated in drying grapes tests, tests on the Verdicchio of selective cryoextraction; tests for the use of lysozyme and long maceration tests of skins on white wines with Prof. Ferrarini of the Università di Udine. The Cantina has long collaborated with the Università Politecnica delle Marche, hosting students in the framework of the curricular traineeships and contributing to the performance of experimental evidences on vineyard management and evaluation of clones of Verdicchio.

He made available the information on the last 30 years of Verdicchio harvest for the development of a degree thesis discussed at UNIVPM in December 2017. He has produced the publications: “Il Verdicchio di Matelica DOC e Riserva DOCG: quando un vino è un racconto” published by Retecamere of Roma, in addition to a collection of documents and descriptive for the 25 years of the main label entitled “Cambrugiano 1988-2012: 25 anni di vino”.