Our story

Welcome to Tenuta Roveglia.

We - Sara, Vanessa and Babettli Azzone – are now the owners of this wonderful property, handed down through four generations. I, Babettli, will tell you our story, one that began a long time ago.
The origins of the estate in fact date back to 1404, when the Roveglio family purchased lands and farmhouses from the monastery of San Salvatore in Brescia (today Santa Giulia in Brescia).
That was how the name came about, but “our” adventure in wine began at the end of the nineteenth century, when my great-grandfather, Federico Zweifel, left the Canton of Glarus in the heart of Switzerland, where he was born, in order to find better working conditions in Italy.

 

From left to right: Sara, Babettli and Vanessa Azzone

My great-grandmother Babettli (right) with my great-grandfather Federico Zweifel (left)

My great-grandmother Babettli (right) with my great-grandfather Federico Zweifel (left)

 

In Italy he fell in love with Lake Garda, where he found lush countryside and soils that would reveal themselves to be ideal for cultivating vines.

Federico Zweifel began buying up land and transforming those (often abandoned) fields into well-ordered vineyards. His son Giusto, my grandfather, did likewise, beginning to produce wine that was initially only destined for friends and local clients. For many years production methods were the traditional ones that farmers handed down from one generation to the next.
A fundamental transformation took place in the 1980s when, on the death of my grandfather, my father, Giovanni Felice Azzone, Professor of General Pathology at the University of Padua and a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, took on the management of Tenuta Roveglia.

My father invested in this winemaking business his passion for research and his courageous approach to technical innovation. His experience as a scientist, in charge of laboratories with a worldwide reputation, had increasingly convinced him that the best results are obtained especially by paying heed to - and having a dialogue with - all one’s colleagues. Thanks to the indispensable expertise of Paolo Fabiani, today the director of the estate and father’s precious collaborator from the very beginning, the winery started to revise its production methods and introduce new protocols and more modern vinification systems.

This distinctive combination of tradition and innovation, of love for the land and scientific research, has led to Tenuta Roveglia transforming itself over the years into a highly attractive example of a modern winery that is rooted in tradition. It is this long history, made up of passion, dedication and a shared dream, that now gives rise to the wines of Tenuta Roveglia.

Giovanni Felice Azzone (left) and Paolo Fabiani

Giovanni Felice Azzone (left) and Paolo Fabiani