Soil and Weather

Garda’s Moraine Hills are characterised by an arrangement of concentric moraine ridges along the north to south axis, with older ridges found further away from the lake. This arrangement results in the picturesque mountain ‘amphitheatre’ that stretches from the little city of Garda to Salò, on the south side of the Garda Lake.
The low reliefs of the amphitheatre are dotted with flat areas that hint at the significant pedological variability (differences in soil chemistry and composition) of the wine growing region. In fact, grain size and soil composition can be seen to change as one moves from steep to the flat areas. In the steep areas, pedological profiles reveal a coarse soil texture consisting of rocks that range in sizes from a few centimetres to many decimetres. In the flat areas, on the contrary, the soil’s grain size tends to reduce: it is possible to observe fractions of land made of fine and very fine silt-like material mixed with shale.
The form of the landscape is rendered even more unique by the presence of boulders, which can be found almost everywhere in the steep and flat parts of the valley. These monoliths are known as glacial erratics, and are a further proof of the glacial origin of Garda’s Moraine Hills. The weather conditions of the moraine amphitheatre are strongly influenced by its massive water basin.
The Garda Lake, in fact, exerts a mitigating action on the climate, storing heat when external temperature grows and realising it when the temperature drops. For this reason, winters are never freezing and summers never scorching. The average annual temperature is 13.3 °C, with an average annual precipitation of 893.4 mm distributed evenly over three seasons. The daily temperature range is increased as a result of a breeze that blows to the south in the morning and to the north in the afternoon. This large variation in daily temperature is an important factor in the optimal maturation of the grapes.
(Borghetto)
(Monzambano)
(Borghetto)