Rare Wines. The renaissance of Calabria's wine

In the beginning it was the Cirò Boys. It was the Nineties and theirs was a reverse revolution. They were a group of producers - which today we would define as ante litteram natural wine producers - who wanted to reaffirm the primacy of tradition and the gaglioppo grape. Having abandoned the small oak barrels and the use (sometimes abuse) of chemistry in the vineyard, they restarted from the recovery of the alberello training system vines and from spontaneous fermentation in the cellar. This group led by Francesco Maria De Franco and Sergio Arcuri today continues to produce wines of excellent quality.

In recent years, a second revolution has affected the southern area of ​​Calabria. One of the most suitable pedoclimatic areas in Italy, where viticulture has been inexplicably abandoned for decades and which in recent times is experiencing an incredible moment of growth. In this novel Woodstock of Calabria wine, there are new protagonists of the local wine scene. Young people like Giovanni Celeste Benvenuto, who on his return from Francavilla Angitola, in Abruzzo, took over the existing vineyards of his grandfather to found his cellar and recover native grapes such as zibibbo di Pizzo and malvasia nera.

Another name that's part of this change of pace was Filippo Brancati. After his untimely death, today his children Marika and Massimo take care of the vineyards overlooking the sea, on the steep terraces of Palizzi, which Filippo first started cultivating. Stories of successful men and women who return to their land to start again and focus all on new life projects with ancestral roots, redeeming the hard work of past generations, allowing us to narrate a new chapter of Calabria winemaking.

Rare Wines. From Calabria, two wines to discover