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At the Guerrieri Rizzardi estate in Negrar di Valpolicella, vines are a natural part of the landscape. They surround Villa Rizzardi and frame the Giardino di Pojega, the family’s historic garden, designed in the late eighteenth century, where green architecture, carefully planned perspectives and views opening onto the countryside create a landscape deeply connected to the surrounding area.
Within the Garden itself, between the Teatro di Verzura and the Belvedere, two of Pojega’s most distinctive features, there is now an unusual presence: 250 Divico vines trained as bush vines, arranged around a large maple tree.
This is an ornamental vineyard, created as part of the Garden’s recent restoration. Its presence introduces into the historic landscape a crop deeply rooted in the history of the Rizzardi family and Valpolicella, reinterpreted through a contemporary project that brings together the memory of the place, varietal research and a thoughtful approach to landscape management.
A Vineyard Within the Garden, Vineyards All Around
The Giardino di Pojega has never been separate from the agricultural landscape that surrounds it. Villa, garden and vineyards are all part of the same estate and, each in a different way, reflect the relationship the Rizzardi family has built with this land over time.
The new planting makes this continuity especially clear. Within the garden walls, the vine becomes part of the Garden’s design; by contrast, the vineyards outside the Garden walls are part of Guerrieri Rizzardi’s agricultural and winemaking activity.
The location is also significant from a landscape perspective. The Teatro di Verzura, shaped through vegetation, and the Belvedere are two focal points along the Pojega route. Placing the vineyard between them introduces an agricultural pattern into one of the Garden’s most distinctive areas without disrupting its overall balance.
Why choose Divico?
What makes the project particularly distinctive is the variety chosen for the 250 vines. The vineyard was planted with Divico, a grape variety developed in Switzerland by the Agroscope research institute and belonging to the group of varieties commonly known as PIWI.
What does PIWI mean?
The acronym PIWI comes from the German Pilzwiderstandsfähige Rebsorten and refers to grape varieties selected for their greater resistance to the main fungal diseases. This characteristic, achieved through breeding and varietal selection programmes, can significantly reduce the need for plant protection treatments, although it does not eliminate them entirely.
In particular, Divico shows good resistance to diseases such as downy mildew, powdery mildew and botrytis. This makes it especially suitable for a vineyard located within a historic garden open to visitors and home to a wide range of botanical species, where vine management needs to integrate with the care of the wider landscape.
“The choice of the Divico variety is consistent with the idea of a vineyard that was not created to produce grapes for winemaking, but to introduce the vine into the Garden through a variety that reflects some of the most recent developments in viticultural research. Its resistance to fungal diseases also allows for a more environmentally conscious approach. It is a contemporary way of expressing the connection between Pojega and our family’s winemaking history.”
Giuseppe Rizzardi, Head of Production at Guerrieri Rizzardi
From an oenological perspective, Divico is a late-ripening grape variety that can produce deeply coloured wines with good tannic structure and aromas that may recall pepper, dark spices, blueberry and violet.
At Pojega, however, the choice is primarily agronomic and landscape-focused: the grapes produced by the Divico vines in the Garden will not be used to make Guerrieri Rizzardi wines. The value of the planting lies in the opportunity to observe the vine through a contemporary, disease-resistant variety introduced into a historic setting.
A contemporary choice within a historic landscape
The presence of the vineyard in this specific area of Pojega also stems from research carried out during the botanical restoration of the Garden. Landscape architect Giuseppe Rallo, while studying the maps of the Napoleonic land registry of 1812, identified the presence of a former kitchen garden in this very spot.
The area therefore once had a cultivated function. Rather than literally reconstructing the historic garden plot, the project chose to recover its agricultural character through the vine, a plant closely connected to the contemporary identity of the estate.
Alongside the 250 Divico vines, around 40 flowering cherry trees were also planted, recalling another crop that once played an important role in both the agricultural landscape and rural economy of Valpolicella. Together, vines and cherry trees create a small rural vignette within the Garden, in dialogue with the history of the place without turning it into a reconstruction of the past.
Bush vines: an agricultural form within the Garden’s design
The vines are trained as bush vines, one of the oldest forms of vine cultivation. Each plant grows as an individual element, while the succession of vines creates an ordered pattern across the lawn around the large maple tree.
This choice reflects the way vegetation becomes architecture at Pojega: hedges, hornbeams, cypresses and trees define paths, perspectives and spaces. The vine also becomes part of this composition, while retaining a form that is immediately recognisable as agricultural.
The plants are spaced at least one and a half metres apart, a layout designed to take into account the fertility of the soil in Negrar and to give each vine enough space for balanced growth.
Beyond the Garden walls: Guerrieri Rizzardi’s vineyards in Valpolicella
At the same time, just beyond the walls, the vine returns to its central role in the agricultural landscape of Valpolicella and in Guerrieri Rizzardi’s daily work.just beyond the walls lies the viticulture that has defined the Negrar estate for generations.
Here, the varieties most traditionally associated with Valpolicella — Corvina, Corvinone and Rondinella — are grown alongside other grapes that have long been present in the Rizzardi vineyards, including Barbera and Sangiovese. Merlot also has its place, particularly in the deeper clay soils, and has been part of Guerrieri Rizzardi’s winemaking history for decades. Today, the vineyards are trained using both pergola and row-training systems.
This reflects the estate’s approach to viticulture: the varieties most closely associated with Valpolicella are complemented by other high-quality grapes that make an important contribution to the distinctive character of Guerrieri Rizzardi wines.
These vineyards are the source of the classic wines of the area, including Valpolicella, Ripasso and Amarone, which remain central to Guerrieri Rizzardi’s work in Negrar.
The ornamental vineyard at Pojega is therefore part of a much broader viticultural landscape. It does not reproduce that landscape in miniature; instead, it offers a different perspective on the vine, connecting the historic Garden with the agricultural culture that continues just beyond its walls.
The vine as a thread of continuity
The vineyard at Pojega is a recent addition, but it grows out of a relationship that has connected the Rizzardi family with the land and viticulture for centuries. Villa, Garden and vineyards belong to the same landscape, each reflecting a different way of interpreting it over time.
Within the Garden, the vine becomes part of a landscape design; beyond the walls, it lies at the heart of agricultural work and wine production. What connects the two is not their function, but the continuity of a place where family history, landscape and viticulture continue to coexist.
A small vineyard in the heart of the Garden thus becomes a new vantage point from which to understand Guerrieri Rizzardi’s Valpolicella: the Valpolicella shaped by the landscape and the one cultivated every day in the estate’s vineyards.