We are young

We are young. How should we go about making ourselves and our wines known? So many times we have mused that “we must tell the story”, especially in a world like that of wine, where it seems that everyone has been around for generations and that heirloom is the “must have” condition for having a presence. We are a young reality; as such, our story is borne from our experience in other worlds, one which led us to the crazy idea of ​​transforming and reinventing ourselves at 50.

The passion for wine has always been at home for me. My dad has always had a great interest in good wine and, as I grew up, he taught me and showed me how to appreciate it. As a little girl, I would venture into my dad’s cellar, enjoying the smell of the undergrowth that hovered among bottles aged for years. I was enchanted by their beautifully designed labels with dreamy names reminiscent of fairy tales (Nuits Saint Georges, Saint Amour), and I fantasized about when I would be allowed to taste the wine that my father religiously kept aside, the one with my year of birth on the label. My senses opened the door to a magical world where the grapes transformed into wine and everything about it intrigued me.

We lived in Turin, in the wine tradition rich north of Italy, and our vacations were organized following specific food and wine routes carefully designed by my father. The stops for lunch and dinner were always the highlight of the day and we invariably joked that we often extended our journey through less travelled routes just to reach a particular restaurant or a specific winery. Today the thought of those trips brings back cherished memories. 

My husband took a different path. For him, the trigger was his desire to return to his native land. Enrico was born in Pescara and spent several decades traveling, throughout Italy first and around the world next, before feeling the strong call to put down roots. One day he said to me: “I would like to leave behind this always ready-to-go suitcase. How do you feel about looking for a piece of land and build something?”  

And so, in 2013, we bought a bare farm with an abandoned olive grove in Cellino Attanasio, in the province of Teramo, which sits about half-way down on the Italian boot, nested between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic Sea. The first time we saw it, it was a spectacular day: the blue sea undulating on the east, the Gran Sasso massif towering on the west, and gently rolling hills in the center… nature at its best.