Decanter meets: San Leonardo’s Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga

Tucked between northern Italy’s mountains and shaped by Alpine winds, Tenuta San Leonardo produces some of the country’s most refined wines in one of its most biodiverse landscapes.

I recently sat down with Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga, who now leads the estate, to talk light, legacy, elegance, and what it means to build a garden just for winter.

Tasting note of the recent 2020 vintage of San Leonardo below

Victoria Daskal: You’re located in quite a striking part of Italy. Can you describe San Leonardo’s setting?

Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga: We’re exactly halfway between Verona and Trento, in the Adige Valley. It’s a narrow strip — only 800 metres wide — framed by mountains that climb to nearly 2,000 metres.

We’re low in altitude, just 120 metres above sea level, but the vertical contrast is dramatic. Lake Garda nearby gives us this thermic wind, Ora del Garda, which blows like clockwork every afternoon. It keeps the air moving and the vines healthy.

VD: Does that geography shape the wines?

AGG: Completely. The valley runs north to south, and the mountains shade us for hours. We lose about three and a half hours of direct sunlight daily. There’s no golden hour at San Leonardo — no Instagram sunsets.

But we gain something more important: indirect, luminous light, plus dramatic thermic shifts. The air floods cold at night, and by day it warms quickly. It’s excellent for photosynthesis and freshness. Our wines tend to have low alcohol, but a lot of flavour concentration.

VD: How would you sum up your terroir in three words?

AGG: Extreme. Hydrated. Bright. The extremes come from our thermic range—lush summers, hard winters. With big drops in temperature between day and night.

We have abundant mountain water that filters through the rocks, emerging like mineral springs keeping the vines and vegetation hydrated. And the light is intense, though indirect. A quiet brilliance.

VD: Your family is renowned for their gardens. When did this passion start?

AGG: Gardening is almost as important to us as winemaking. My great-great-grandfather was inspired by La Belle Époque in Paris. He built Villa Gresti in the Liberty style in the 1870s and surrounded it with exotic gardens.

Later, my grandmother created a remarkable garden near Rome called La Landriana with Russell Page, one of the most important British garden architects. That shaped my father, and it shaped me.

VD: What about at San Leonardo? Are you working on any new garden projects?

AGG: Yes — a winter garden. Our region is stunning from April to November, but winter is harsh, brown, silent. I want to create a space that blooms even in January, full of fragrance and shelter for birds.

It will be open-air but enclosed by earth—like a round bowl carved from the land. Inside we’re planting Calycanthus, hellebores; plants that are beautiful in the cold. A garden for a sombre season.

VD: Let’s talk wine. You joined your father at San Leonardo at a very young age. What was your vision then?

AGG: At the time, the world wanted big, extracted, oaky wines. I was 23 and thought I knew better. I pushed my father to make San Leonardo more ‘contemporary’. I even suggested blending Teroldego into the flagship wine, as part of the ‘glocal’ (global and local) trend.

He looked at me and said: “You’re an idiot. Go back to the office.” And he was right. He had a very clear vision of what a wine was. Elegance was always the main drive of his wine production.

VD: But you did make important changes eventually — particularly with white wines.

AGG: Yes, in 2011 I launched Vette, a Sauvignon Blanc. It’s vibrant, floral, and stainless steel–fermented with bâtonnage to give it texture. Later we introduced Riesling, which is more gastronomic. That one sees a year in 900-litre Stockinger oak barrels with bâtonnage. I love a bit of oak in whites — it gives finesse. But I don’t like to feel oak in reds.

VD: Are those white wines from your own vineyards?

AGG: Currently, we buy the grapes from seven high-altitude plots, between 200 and 700 metres. Land is impossibly expensive here — half a million euros per hectare, if you can even find it.

Most plots are 1.5 hectares, and 95% of the wine in our region is made by two huge co-ops. But we are in the process of buying a small vineyard of Riesling that also contains some rows of Pinot Bianco.

VD: You’ve been shifting toward organic farming. Where do you stand now?

AGG: We’re fully certified organic. We use many biodynamic practices too, like moon cycles, but I wouldn’t say we’re fully biodynamic. The reds can’t be certified because we still buy some grapes, but the philosophy is there: treating the vineyard as a living thing.

VD: Besides moving to organic, and introducing white wine, what other major changes did you make at the estate?

AGG: I changed the way we sell our wines. My father had one distributor for the whole of Italy. Today, we have 123 agents. It’s much more work — small orders, direct to restaurants, not big pallet drops.

But it creates relationships, and those matter. Fifty percent of our wine now stays in Italy. The rest goes to 67 markets — US, UK, Switzerland, Germany… even Kazakhstan. I also have hopes for selling to Lebanon and India.

VD: What’s next on the horizon for San Leonardo?

AGG: Sincerely, I don’t want to grow San Leonardo more than it is already. Actually I reduced the size, the production is more manageable and sustainable. We can concentrate on our identity and vision.

Tasting San Leonardo 2020:

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