It is useful to step back for a minute and appreciate some of the ways that the wine industry is evolving under the influence of innovative producers. Sometimes innovation is so obvious you can’t miss it. That was the case for us, for example, when Sue and I participated in the big SIMEI wine technology program in Milan. But innovation takes many forms. Herewith three interesting Italian case studies.

Product Innovation: Pasqua Wines

Pasqua Wines, which celebrates its 100th birthday in 2025, was the first Italian winery to receive the Wine Enthusiast Innovator of the Year award in 2023. The Pasqua family determined in 2014 to take bold steps, exploring with the possibilities of their wines while not losing hold of their roots in the Veneto. The results have garnered much attention, as the Wine Enthusiast recognition shows.

Sue and I had the opportunity to get a first-hand sense of the  innovation earlier this year by comparing the classic Famiglia Pasqua Amarone della Valpolicella with ther Mai Dire Mai Amarone della Valpolicella. The classic Amarone was just that, classic. Powerful (15 percent abv) but elegant. Exactly what you would hope for it a fine Amarone wine.

Mai Dire Mai means “never say never,” and the wine really pushed the limits in terms of power (16.5 percent abv), wood treatment, and intensity generally. It made us stop and think about what Amarone is and what it can be. And this is just one example of the sort of new thinking behind the Pasqua family’s innovation program. We can’t wait to be “lab rats” in other Pasqua wine experiments in the future!

Process Innovation: Ca’d’Gal Wines.

Ca’d’Gal winery has a claim to product innovation, too, but that’s not why it is on this list. Ca’d’Gal makes the traditional wines of its region, Mostaco d’Asti and Barbera d’Asti, and IGT varieties including Sauvignon and Chardonnay, too.

What is different about them, from our home tastings, is their restraint. If you are used to having Moscato right in your face (if you know what I mean), you might have to search a little bit to find it here. These are wine for a new generation who do not necessarily appreciate the obvious.

But I am interested in Ca’d’Gal more for its process innovations, the way it has changed the way it makes some of its best wines to give a new idea of the region’s wines. The inspiration was sort of a Back to the Future concept. Winery owners Alessandro Varagnolo learned of an old tradition where bottles of wine were buried in caves for many years and then dug up when mature. This reminds me a bit of the recent practice of storing wine bottles in the ocean to mimic, in a way, the effect of wines trapped in sunken ships. A difference was that the ship wrecks were accidents and the buried wine was intentional.

With this idea in mind, Ca’d’Gal has been covering boxes of special old vine Moncato d’Asti wines in sand and leaving them in the dark and humidity for literally dozens of months. We were given a bottle of Moscato Vite Vecchia 2016, a very limited production of wine aged in the sand for 60 months. I am not sure if it was the old vine juice or the sand box ageing, but the resulting wine was extremely complex. A very different idea of Moscato. Perhaps it will stimulate a small movement to rediscover other forgotten wine processes and revive them for a new age.

Identity Innovation: Manzone Wines

Economists typically focus on product and process innovation when studying the industrial change, but I think it is possible to add a third category, identity innovation, to the mix. Sometimes something happens to simply change the way that everyone thinks about a particular product or firm. That’s how I think about what’s going on at Giovanni Manzone winery.

Like Ca’d’Gal, Manzone is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2025. The family and its wine business has seen a lot of changes in those hundred years and have developed a deserved reputation as producer of fine Barolo wines. Sue and I have enjoyed their Langhe Nebbiolo and Barolo bottlings, but it is one particular wine that made us rethink everything.

The story of Manzone Barolo Reserva Cento Anni began in sixteen years ago 2009. There was something special about that vintage that inspired the Manzone family to give some of the best wines special attention. In order to develop the balance of power, intensity, and elegance, the wine was aged in neutral oak fior an incredible 84 months before going into concrete tanks for 60 months more.

Only about 3000 bottles of Barolo Cento Anni were made, so you are unlikely to randomly stumble across it at your local wine shop. Anyone lucky enough to taste it, however, will see both Barolo in general and the Manzone wines in particular in a different way. A bold innovation and fine tribute to one hundred years of a winemaking family.