Record first quarter 2022 for the Arnaldo Caprai winery: "Despite the first three months of the year - explains managing director Marco Caprai - were marked by war and Covid, our total sales, domestic and foreign, were +8% over budget, +66% over last year and +34% over 2019, the pre-pandemic year. Figures that make us face the coming months with great optimism".
Months that will see the start of an investment plan to improve the quantity and quality of Arnaldo Caprai products.
In January, construction work began on the new grape reception area, and at the end of the harvest, work will begin on expanding the winery's vinification area, which will flank the historic one. In the new facility, which will be completed in 2023, the average daily grape processing capacity will increase from approximately 150 quintals per day to 600 quintals per day, with an expansion also of the grape sorting area, which will be considerably increased both in terms of manual selection (for extremely high quality grapes) and automatic selection with state-of-the-art optical and viral selectors. In the autumn, after the harvest, work will begin on the new vinification area in a newly constructed two-storey building, with 12 refrigeration and heating cells for wines undergoing fermentation in barriques and full vinification, equipped with fully automatic drum rotation and positioning systems: a total of 800 square metres of building that will increase storage capacity from 13 thousand to 21 thousand hectolitres.
In total, the roof of the new structure will be fitted with a photovoltaic system that should cover approximately 80% of the entire winery's energy requirements. This is the latest symbol of the Arnaldo Caprai winery's focus on sustainability (at 360 degrees, not just in green terms): a focus that has been summed up in the second edition of the Arnaldo Caprai Sustainability Report, which will be presented at Vinitaly together with the new Sagrantino vintage, the winery's flagship wine, i.e. 2018, with a special focus on the integral vinification brought to the Montefalco winery by Michel Rolland, the world-renowned oenologist who has been a consultant to Arnaldo Caprai since 2015.
ARNALDO CAPRAI FARM AT A GLANCE
Few other wineries in Italy and around the world are immediately identified just by mentioning the name of the denomination to which they belong, like Arnaldo Caprai, itself a symbol of Sagrantino di Montefalco. A unique reality, synonymous with Italian excellence, capable of creating wines that are out of the ordinary in terms of depth, elegance and longevity: not only reds, but also whites. The credit for this adventure that began in the late 1970s goes to Marco Caprai, Arnaldo's son. It was he, in fact, more than anyone else who believed in the richness of Sagrantino, reinterpreting it in a modern key, through the most innovative production and business management methods, which have enabled him to win the favour of the public and critics all over the world. Not to be outdone by the whites: Arnaldo Caprai's Grecante, 100% Grechetto, managed to conquer Wine Spectator's Top100.
A great company, Arnaldo Caprai, that guards a green soul, considering issues concerning sustainability, protection and safeguarding the environment as fundamental. The point of observation always remains the same: trying to behave in harmony with natural evolution cycles, preserving and enhancing the territory in which it operates. This is why the company decided to create an Environmental Management System that complies with international regulations, developing a voluntary territorial protocol of environmental, economic and social sustainability of the production process.
It is in this unparalleled context that wines of unforgettable substance are born, complex and elegant, capable of narrating the best of an entire region, Umbria.