Today we left our base in Bolzano and traveled along the Isarco River Valley to our northern-most wine tasting. The Abbazia di Novacella is a 12th century abbey just 44 kilometers from the border with Austria. Here in the north of Italy, wine drinking was more of an elite pleasure; although the abby has been making wine for 800 years, it has only been selling to the public since the 1990s.

The abbey includes a number of buildings dedicated to wine making, wine tasting, a museum, a church, a restaurant and cafe, a library with an extensive collection of books mainly on scientific and theological subjects, and housing for the residents. We took a guided tour of the abbey, the highlight of which was the library, with its 20,000 volumes and beautifully illustrated manuscripts.

We walked outside the abbey walls to peek at one of their vineyards. The slopes around the abbey, at altitudes of 600 to 900 meters and composed of gravelly, glacial moraine soils, are good for white wine grapes, and the abbey grows Sylvaner, Kerner, Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, Müller Thurgau, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc and Gewürztraminer. It’s too cold here for red wine grapes, but the abbey owns vineyards around Bozen (Bolzano) which, despite its northern latitude and proximity to the Alps, is one of the hottest towns in Italy due to warm winds from the south and high number of sunny days. Conditions are perfect for the Lagrein grape. The red grape varieties Blauburgunder, Vernatsch and Rosenmuskateller are grown in vineyards south of Bozen, acquired by the abbey in 1938. In all, the abbey produces 1 million bottles annually; 25% is exported.

We tasted three wines from their “classic” line –

• Omnes Dies, 2025 (White – 50% Müller Thurgau, 50% Moscato giallo);
• Kerner, 2025 (White – 100% Kerner);
• St. Magdalener, 2024 (Red – 90 % Schiava, 10 % Lagrein)

We didn’t buy any of these, but there was a tasting room where tastings from a selection of a couple dozen of their wines could be purchased for 1/2 or 1 Euro. We tasted several, and purchased their Kerner Passito Praepositus, a sweet wine, which we intended to add to the extra suitcase we brought to carry wines home.

After our tasting, we had lunch at the abbey’s restaurant, Stiftskeller. We had Tyrolean Knödel, the dumplings common in this part of Italy. (More on that in an upcoming post.) They were delicious. Wine was a Gewurztraminir 2024. 

In the afternoon, we visited our last winery of the tour, Loacker. We walked into the vineyards with our host, Franz, who told us about his vineyards and wines. While the current owners took over in the 1990s, the winery itself dates back to 1334. In all, Loacker has 50 hectares in production (seven here; the remainder in Tuscany). Like other wineries we visited on this trip, Loacker is committed to biodynamic methods, and have been growing their grapes sustainably for 40 years. All harvesting is done by hand — something that is becoming more difficult, Franz told us, because it is getting harder to find workers. They use glass stoppers for most of their wines, rather than cork. Loacker is so committed to biodynamic farming that even their URL is bio: https://www.loacker.bio/en/.

The tasting room, in Loacker’s “Skywine Pavilion” perched on the side of a hill, had great views. We tried five wines from the grapes grown here: a Sauvignon Blanc; a Souvignier Gris (a cross between Seyval Blanc and Zähringer, which itself is a cross between Traminer and Riesling); a Chardonnay; a Lagrein (red wine grape native to this region); and a Cabernet Sauvignon/Lagraen blend. We also tried three of their Tuscan wines.

We bought five bottles from this winery, and would have bought more, but that would put us over our 1/2-case shipping break limit, and we would have had to spend more to get to the next 1/2 case.

After our tasting, we enjoyed the views from the winery. Another member of our group, Athena, had us pose for a picture with the vineyards in the background.