Sfusobuono , Piemonte & Lombardia Sfusobuono has renewed a historically little-considered packaging for high quality products and by selecting small artisans of the vineyard, they have enhanced the bag in box making it beautiful, even when empty. Sfusobuono chooses winemakers who practice organic farming in the vineyard and those who use indigenous yeasts and a...
Passopisciaro, Etna, Sicilia A palmento is the traditional winemaking structure in Sicily. Regulations eventually led nearly all palmentos to be converted for other uses, such as for storage or restaurants, but since Palmento Costanzo is located within Mt Etna National Park, it remained untouched as a protected historical structure. Mimmo and Valeria are a Sicilian...
Mandrolisai, Sardegna Sardegna, the second largest island in the Mediterranean, is geologically one of the oldest parts of Italy. It was once part of a mountain range that existed before the Alps and Apennines were formed and 150,000 years or so ago it was still connected to the Italian mainland. Now it sits 112 miles...
Sennori, Sardegna To make natural wine is not a trend for Alessandro Dettori, but rather the soul of his family’s work since 1860. Alessandro was just a boy of 12 when he began to work with his grandfather. In Romangia, the region of northern Sardegna that includes Sorso and Sennori, the vineyards have been so...
Manduria, Puglia In 1881, the Countess Sabini brought as her dowry "barbatelle" cuttings of Primitivo when she married Don Tommasso. They planted the first primitivo vineyard in Manduria and began the story of this land as a treasured site for the grape. Named by Pliny as “the town full of vines,” Manduria was highly important...
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...
Guardia Sanframondi, Sannio, Campania Legend has it that witches from the village of Benevento gather around their smoking cauldron under a walnut tree on the banks of the river Calore. Thus the estate’s name,Terre Stregate: “haunted land.” Young Filomena Iacobucci and her brother Carlo, together with their parents, have 1000-year-old traditions from their region at...
Abruzzo This Artigiano wine comes from a little group of farmers working in the mountainous, rocky zone between the Sangro river and Terre di Chieti. The base of clay offers excellent water retention in this dry climate, and stony primary rocks lend the wine its refreshing minerality. These independent small farmers partner with Artisanal Cellars...
Colline Teramane, Abruzzo Terraviva Winey was born in the late 1970’s in Colline Teramane appellation of Abruzzo. The vineyards, 22 hectares (54 acres) in Tortoreto, are framed by the Grand Sasso at one end and the Adriatic Sea at the other. Arranged like an amphitheater facing the sea, the vineyards are kissed by a climate...
Staffolo, Castelli di Jesi, Marche Riccardo Baldi was quite young when he devoted himself to his family’s old vineyards, which they had previously farmed to make wine for their own consumption. He introduced biodynamic methods, working with indigenous yeast, aging in concrete tanks, and vinifying each vineyard area separately to discover the secrets of each...
Gradoli, Lazio In Gradoli comune on Lake Bolsena, the largest volcanic crater-lake in Europe, Georgea Marini and her husband Alessandro produce organic wine from local varieties on a farm of less than 2 hectares. Their skin-macerated wine made from Procanico--a high quality biotype of Trebbiano Toscano--is a stunner, with deep, amber color and evocative, savory...
Chiusi, Toscana Fabio Cenni has dedicated his life’s work to Sangiovese, here in the cradle of Etruscan history, Siena province near Chiusi. Pliny the Elder first observed vines and winemaking in Chiusi over 2000 years ago. Once a major center in the Etruscan League, Chiusi is now an important location for historians of many civilizations....