Valeri’s wine journey started in the Riverina. He comes from a family of Italian immigrant grape growers – his grandparents, Anna and Pietro Valeri, immigrated to the region in the 1950s and set up a vineyard here. Valeri eagerly took up the family trade, studying wine science and viticulture at Charles Sturt University before cutting his teeth at some of the larger producers in the Riverina. The obligatory overseas vintages swiftly followed – but perhaps owing to his underdog Riverina background, those were in less obvious regions such as Canada’s Okanagan Valley and Romania’s Timiș County. Once back in Australia, Valeri largely stuck to working in the Riverina, with the exception of a vintage with Best’s in Western Victoria.
“I never really considered setting up a vineyard anywhere else,” Valeri says of Via Pola’s home in the Riverina. “While the region is more widely known for its commercial wines, I believe there’s untapped potential here, especially when focusing on varieties that are ideally suited to our warm climate.”
Part of the impetus behind setting up Via Pola came in the form of a local viticultural crisis. “It is no secret that things are challenging at the moment, particularly here in the Riverina,” Valeri says. ‘Challenging’ may be an understatement for the region’s grape-growers. Prices for their grapes plummeted to historic lows of $150 per tonne in 2024 – roughly fifteen cents per finished bottle’s worth of grapes, well below the cost of production. “With the challenging market conditions for grape growers locally, I saw an opportunity to pivot and do things differently,” he says, “focusing on Italian varieties that thrive in warm climates like the Riverina.”
“With the challenging market conditions for grape growers locally, I saw an opportunity to pivot and do things differently, focusing on Italian varieties that thrive in warm climates like the Riverina.”
Perhaps appropriately, it turns out that the varieties that Valeri has planted in the Via Pola vineyard are ones from the southern half of Italy, where his grandparents and most of the other first-generation Italian immigrants who shaped the region come from. “Many of the varieties suited to the Riverina come from a region in Italy [Abruzzo] where my grandparents were born,” he says. “It’s a connection to my heritage that’s incredibly exciting, especially when I think about how my grandfather was making wines from varieties like montepulciano and pecorino in Italy, and now I have them growing in our vineyard here in Australia.” The name of the vineyard itself – after the street his grandfather grew up on – reflects this Italian connection, and the vineyard is a family affair, with Valeri’s father Tony helping plant in the new vines.
While Via Pola’s varietal mix pays homage to the Italian immigrant farmers who built the Riverina’s wine industry, the viticultural methods are anything but the norm in this flood-irrigated, hot region that has historically practiced conventional agriculture. “I aim to be sustainable in everything I do,” Valeri says. “The vineyard recently received its sustainability certification which is an important step in the journey. The vineyard is also managed organically, and I am working towards achieving organic certification in the near future. It is always front of mind how the decisions we make today will impact the vineyard and the environment in the years to come.”
Quality also drives Valeri’s viticulture at Via Pola. “We developed the Via Pola vineyard from scratch with the aim of doing as much as possible to increase quality,” Valeri says, “whether that be hand pruning to better control bud numbers and optimise sap flow or selecting varieties that are ideally suited to the climate and soil, through to managing the vineyard organically to increase biodiversity. It is exciting to see how some of the efforts and hard work in the vineyard manifest in the wines.”
“I think the most significant changes I have seen is an alignment of physiological ripeness with what I consider ideal sugar and acid levels,” he adds. “By giving the vines an environment where they can thrive, they reach flavour ripeness at an ideal Baumé while still holding plenty of natural acidity. This balance is key to the fresh, bright, fruit forward style of wines that Via Pola produces.”
“My grandfather was making wines from varieties like montepulciano and pecorino in Italy, and now I have them growing in our vineyard here in Australia.”
By focusing on quality over yields, Via Pola provides a roadmap out of the race to the bottom that has trapped the region’s growers in a vicious cycle of higher yields, lower quality, and lower prices. In this regard, the project isn’t dissimilar to some of the new projects such as Ricca Terra and Delinquente that have shaken up the industry in the similarly farmed (and similarly named) Riverland region of South Australia.
It helps that the resulting wines are delicious, made with a deft touch that lets the fruit speak of its Riverina origins. “Although I aim to use as little winemaking artifact as possible when making the wines, there are at times certain techniques which I think enhance or highlight varietal characters,” Valeri says. “I play around with things such as a skin soak on the fiano pre-ferment. I really like the intensity of fruit and mouthfeel it gives to the wine. In the montepulciano, a portion of the wine undergoes carbonic maceration. It adds another layer of complexity, and I am seeing some spice characters and a jammy red fruit intensity which I believe compliments the variety.”
Other varieties are starting to produce enough fruit to make saleable quantities of wine. “This vintage, I am making an amber style vermentino which has been fermented on skins that is looking great,” Valeri says. “It is certainly a contrasting style within the brand but with such a small amount of vermentino available this season I had to give it a go.” Beyond that, Valeri’s open-minded and optimistic about the possibilities of his vineyard and label. “The wines will evolve and grow as each year,” he says. “I am always striving to improve and tweak things to get the very best out of every vintage. It would be really cool to see Via Pola Wines in five to ten years gain some more awareness in the market, and a cult following as a producer of exciting alternative varietal wines.”
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