A descendent of the Costa ancestry, one of the oldest families in Italy, patricians and senators in the
Roman Empire, corsairs of the Tyrrhenian Sea, Massimiliano Enrique Costa always had the Mediterranean blood to fuel his ambitions and dreams. He grew up in the sweeping hills of the Veneto region surrounding lake Garda.
The love and respect for his land posed the humble counterpart to he latin hotspur and determined also Massimiliano’s path. This duality has always been the key to Massimiliano’s world. As a young boy he was breeding gooses during the day, and enjoying blue blooded family dinners in the evening.
It became pretty soon apparent, that he wanted to merge the two worlds by creating something special, and what greater way than wine, with the millenial culture and heritage of one of the finest wine making regions in Italy and develop a new breed of exquisite wines.
The area around the city of Verona is already known to the expert wine aficionado, mostly because of its Amarone.
There is however much more to the richness of these hills in Northern Italy and its unique aspects of territoir that have not been fully explored, developed and celebrated until now.
For over a decade, Massimiliano devoted himself to create the wines he so eagerly sought after, and the path was everything but easy. In an industry that is so much focused on quantities, even in the higher market segments where elite wineries produce from 2,000 to 20,000 cases per year, there is little space for the small visionaries, for their research, for the time consuming creative process to create a great wine.
In the elite wine industry success is not an option, but it is known to require endurance. Accepting no compromises and remaining faithful to the true principles of fine winemaking demands also sacrifices, it may very well occur that a single harvest is lost entirely, for example due to hail damage.
That is the price to pay when you seek a unique wine, grown on a unique soil, with the regions unique local weather conditions. When Massimiliano sold his first vintage, 1,000 bottles or little over 80 cases, he delivered them on his Graziella bicycle. Surely this was quite a clash of styles at the gourmet restaurants in William Shakespeare’s picturesque Verona, but the young Massimiliano had little interest in appearances, the key was the wine and his personal maniacal devotion to it.
In 2006 Costa wines hit the Vinitaly competition, Italy’s finest wine exhibition. Massimiliano faced the renowned and established Italian and international wineries. Who was this rookie, trying to play with the big boys, when a few weeks earlier he just finished to attach 5,000 labels on his bottles, by hand.
The would soon know, as Costa Wines brought home their first awards at the competition, and from then on the success was repeated every year. Massimiliano Enrique Costa feels confident working in the niche, with his annual production of little over 1,600 cases. The reward for his devotion to create the finest wines in the Veneto region and some of the very best in Italy is the recognition he gets from his faithful elite customers. “In vino veritas.” – The truth is in the wine, and for Costa it is clear where the truth about the value of his work, the result of his passion should be measured.