When we began producing our first 10,000 bottles of sparkling wine in 1979, the South Tyrolean wine landscape was quite different.
Come to think of it, the international wine landscape was. In South Tyrol, there wasn’t one cellar which solely produced sparkling wine.” This is how Josef Reiterer starts his tale on the establishment of the sparkling wine cellar, ARUNDA.
With typical South Tyrolean humour, he adds: “Me and my wife, Marianne, had always wanted to take our first steps to become independent and not have a regular 9 to 5 job, be our own boss, if you will. I leaned more towards grappa production, but we all know how women love shiny and sparkling things. It was obvious that we would dedicate our work to classical bottle fermentation.“ Josef, or rather, Sepp, has always had a passion for wine production. He was brought up on a farm in Meltina, and he was one of the first to complete the recently established specialised school in agriculture, wine and horticulture in Laimburg. That is how Reiterer became interested in wine. At the end, the ambitious student enrolled at the Ahrweiler School of Wine.
With this sound, basic knowledge, he made it to the end of the Viticulture School in Bad Kreuznach. After his diploma, the young oenologist become known in Italy as the consultant for the former internationally renowned Seitz, before going back to his hometown of Meltina. „It is here, on 1,200 metres, that we find the perfect conditions for the stockpiling and ripening of sparkling wine.
The natural changes in temperature mean that our sparkling wine can ripen in a slow and balanced way. In 24 months the wines have turned into a fruity, complex sparkling wine: ARUNDA and its well-known fine and long-lasting bubbles.“ Special Cuvées can take up to 60 months, says Sepp Reiterer, finally leading to the preparation of their bottles, which still occurs in the traditional way.