Parte I · La Terra

Sele plain, five kilometres from the sea.

River alluvium laid down over clay, in a plain that has grown food for as long as anyone has written things down. The Greeks farmed here. So has everyone since.

Freshly worked ground between the planted rows, seen from above
River alluvium over clay. Worked, but never turned deeper than it wants to be.

Nothing about this ground is dramatic. It is flat, it is fertile, and it has never been fashionable for wine — which is precisely why there was land here to plant, and why nobody had already decided what it should taste like.

Soil

River alluvium over clay. Deep, cool, slow to give up water — which matters more every year.

Water

The Sele, and sea air that arrives every afternoon at four and takes the edge off the heat.

Air

Salt from the west. Cold off the Cilento mountains at night. The gap between the two is what keeps acidity in the fruit.

Practice

Farmed organically, though not certified — we would rather say so plainly than let you assume otherwise. Hand-worked, deliberately small, and no shortcuts we would be embarrassed to explain to someone standing in the rows.

Satellite parcel map of the two planted blocks
0.33 ha and 0.5 ha, planted 2024.

I vicini

Three things sit within half an hour of the gate.

Battipaglia and the Piana del Sele — the heartland of mozzarella di bufala campana DOP. The buffalo are a ten-minute drive. So is the zizzona.

Paestum — three of the best-preserved Greek temples anywhere, a UNESCO site, and the artichoke that carries the town's name.

An olive tree backlit by low sun
Olives were here first, and will outlast all of us.

The Cilento and the coast — where the Mediterranean Diet got its name, to the south; the Amalfi ferries to the north.

Lunch laid out on the tailgate of a truck beside the rows
Lunch in the rows. Buffalo mozzarella from down the road, and whatever the season is doing.

A vineyard cannot claim credit for its neighbours. But it can refuse to pretend it exists in isolation, and it can put them on the table.

Two people tasting wine at the fence line at the edge of the vineyard
The first tastings happen where the work happens, at the fence.

Parte II · Le Viti

Roots, cultivation, and what is coming.

A vine is the slowest argument you can have with a piece of ground. You plant, you wait years, and only then does it tell you whether you were right. Rosicapezze is two years into that conversation.

Young vines in guards with drip line and a green cover crop between the rows
Two years in the ground. Guards, drip line, and a cover crop holding the soil.
Vine rows from above, evenly spaced across the parcel
Eight tenths of a hectare, planted in two parcels.

The vineyard in three tenses

Roots  ·  1975–2021

Ground held on to for fifty years, mostly out of stubbornness.

The roots here are older than anything standing on the surface. Nobody planted vines because nobody had the time. The land waited.

Cultivation  ·  2021–today

Four varietals, planted in 2024, chosen for this plain rather than for a label.

Aglianico and Fiano because they are Campania's own and have been here longer than the family has. Syrah and Viognier because they belong to a climate exactly like this one — hot afternoons, sea air, cold coming off the Cilento at night.

Every decision this season is a decision about a wine nobody has tasted.

A man at the trellis wire with his hand on a dormant vine
February. A hand on the wire, checking what came through the winter.

Young vines  ·  toward 2032

Vines this young make thin, eager, unserious wine. That is arithmetic, not failure.

Somewhere around 2032 the roots will be deep enough that the plant stops rushing, and what the Sele plain actually tastes like will finally show up in a glass.

A rusted trellis post stencilled with the number 32
Post 32. The wire runs on past the edge of the frame.

Parte III · L’Anno

Le Stagioni
The Seasons

Four moods. One year.

A vineyard does not have a busy season and a quiet one. It has four different jobs, four different tables, and four different kinds of light. This is the year as it is actually lived here.

01 / IV
March – May

Spring — Growth

Bud break. Two weeks where the whole plain turns the colour of a green apple and nobody sleeps well. Everything that happens for the rest of the year is decided by what the vine does now, and there is almost nothing you can do to hurry it.

It is also artichoke season. The Carciofo di Paestum comes out of the ground twenty minutes south of here, and for a few weeks it is on every table in the province, raw and dressed with nothing much.

On the tableCarciofo di Paestum, raw
SoundWind through empty wire
Cover crop in flower between the rows, February
Blossom, early spring.
02 / IV
June – August

Summer — Labour & Sun

Work before seven, work after six, and nothing much in between except heat. The vines are managed rather than watched now — canopy, exposure, the daily judgement about how much sun a bunch should be allowed to take.

This is when the estate is loudest. It is also when the long table goes down the middle of the rows at dusk, because the light lasts until nine and the ground finally cools.

On the tableZizzona, tomato, salt
SoundCicadas, unbroken
The olive grove in hard summer light
Midsummer, under the olives.
03 / IV
September – November

Autumn — Harvest

Picking starts at dawn and lunch starts when it stops. Everything the year has been about arrives inside a window of a few days, and the decision of exactly when to pick is the single most consequential judgement anyone here makes.

It is the most honest day in the wine calendar, and the one we open to guests — not as spectators but as pickers, because the work is the point.

On the tableWhatever came out of the fire
SoundCrates, and the crush
04 / IV
December – February

Winter — Rest

Pruning, mending, waiting. Every cut made now is a decision about next year’s crop, taken months before there is anything to look at. The vine gives up everything it does not need. So does the estate.

The olives are pressed the week they are picked, and the new oil is on the table while it is still cloudy and tastes of grass.

On the tableOlio nuovo, broth, last year’s wine
SoundSecateurs. Nothing else.
The work caravan under the olives, trellis stakes waiting
The rows in winter, pruned and staked.

In the meantime

We would rather tell you it is too early than sell you something that is.