he cultivation of "vitis vinifera sativa" (the wine grape) in the territory of the province of Mantua was mentioned by the Latin poet Virgil, who declared that the wine of the Mantuan hills was second only to the celebrated Falernum.Insofar as cultivation of the vine in the plain is concerned, various documents indicate that grapes were being grown and vinified in the area as early as the year 765.
However, generalized development of winemaking in the district began only around the year 1100. The activity was put on a modern footing at the beginning of the present century, after the devastation of the phylloxera epidemic.
Up until the fifties, nearly all of the farms in the Mantuan plain devoted considerable space to the growing of vines. The producers established seven cooperative organizations for the operation of as many wineries in the period beginning in 1902 and ending in 1958. In the fifties and sixties, the areas once devoted to vines were progressively reconverted, especially in the area on the right banks of the rivers Oglio and Po.
Cultivation was emphasized between the Oglio and the left bank of the Po as well asin the Oltrep˜ Mantovano. Those two areas are now the production zone of Lambrusco Mantovano, which recently joined the ranks of Denominazione di Origine Controllata wines, a group to which wines of the Garda Colli Mantovani, produced in the hilly part of the province, already belonged.
