Tempa di Zoè

Agropoli, Campania

Tempa di Zoè is the latest reinvention of Bruno de Conciliis, an indispensable winemaker and cultural thinker from the Cilento region of Campania. In 1980, a devastating earthquake struck a young Bruno’s homeland. Already suffering from dwindling populations due to economic migration, several small towns physically collapsed in entirety. Bruno had studied art and literature at university, and associated with Umberto Eco in Bologna. He immediately returned home to help with the effort to rebuild, and from that moment he has offered his life’s energy in devotion to this land.

Bruno’s early restorative project in Cilento was an herb farm started with university friends, affiliated with early biodynamics societies, and blessed by the bees from a 500-hive apiary. In the 1990’s, Bruno turned his attention to winemaking on his family’s lands, which had previously sold its grapes for use in one of the region’s uninspired cheap wines, overly chemical and bottled for tourists with pictures of the local temples on the label. For a land that historically records wine grapes growing 800 years before Christ, Cilento at that time needed someone like Bruno to re-discover its possibility for expression.

The soil here is completely different from the volcanic soils known elsewhere in Campania. Instead of volcanic influence, the land here was for so long underneath the sea, and is characterized by a remarkable sand. Most Italian sand is limestone-gray; here the sand is gold in color, with sedimentary schist layering of sandstone and marl. This specific minerality results in a particular salty and savory character for both the reds, based on Aglianico, and the Fiano-based whites.

The human piece of Cilento’s terroir has been led by Bruno, a pioneer not only due to his advocacy of organics, biodynamics, and solar power, but also through his philosophy of land. This is a philosophy not captive to any trend or market, but instead relentlessly on thoughtful, curious, sustainable and responsive. In this time of climate crisis, no other approach will work. The future is worth it.

The name Tempa di Zoè refers not only to a physical place; it is, above all, a declaration of intent. “Tempa” is the word for the rolling hills of Cilento that stretch down to the sea from north to south. Zoè is the Greek word for the essence of life, the universal principle common to the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds.

Total annual production: 40,000 bottles.