Ampeleia Alicante Nero

Profile & Story

Ampeleia began in 2000 as a shared idea between Giovanni Podini, Elisabetta Foradori and Thomas Widmann over lunch at a mountain refuge, and found its home among the volcanic rocks of Roccatederighi in the Alta Maremma. The project was handed to Marco Tait, who became winemaker and company manager at twenty-two and runs it still, with Foradori on the board and the Podini family carrying the original dream. The estate farms about thirty-five hectares across fifty-four parcels of clay and limestone, certified organic and then biodynamic, producing all its own preparations on site and grazing cattle among the vines and woods since 2014. Alicante Nero grew in the Alta Maremma for centuries before being pulled out in favour of deeper-coloured, higher-yielding varieties; Ampeleia brought the first cuttings home in 2003 and planted them in the lower vineyards nearest the sea, releasing this monovarietal for the first time in 2013. It comes from the single vineyard La Pieve at 250 metres, on clay mixed with pebbles, conglomerates and sand, cropped at 45 hectolitres per hectare and picked in the third week of August, then vinified with 20% whole clusters and raised ten months in concrete tanks at 12.5% alcohol, unfined and unfiltered.