Falesco is the winery project of the Cotarella brothers Riccardo (who died in 2021) and Renzo Cotarella, two of Italy's most influential winemakers and consultants of the 1990s and 2000s based at Montecchio on the Lazio/Umbria border near Lake Bolsena. Falesco is best known for Montiano, a 100% Merlot IGT Lazio that became one of Italy's most acclaimed Super-Tuscan-era international varieties when first released in 1993, and for Vitiano, a blended red from Umbria.

Montiano represented the Italian ambition to produce world-class Merlot comparable to Pomerol in structure and richness from central Italian volcanic soils. The Falesco range provides a southern-Lazio wine perspective rarely represented in Australian on-premise lists: Lake Bolsena volcanic soils, indigenous and international varieties, and the Cotarella winemaking philosophy that emphasises freshness and precision over extraction. For programmes building Italian wine depth beyond Tuscany and Piedmont, Falesco offers the Lazio/Umbria border as an underrepresented quality zone.