I Parieti

I Parieti estate is named for the area’s characteristic dry-stone walls, lies at 400m with stony soils and constant breezes and stronger winds.

Matteo’s isn’t a story about generation-long winemaking, but his family – as well as many other Apulian families – has always had their hands in the earth working the land. There certainly was no lack of impact and influences: his father’s father made his own primitivo wine in the masseria (typical southern Italian farm) while his grandmother was a well-appreciated pruner and grafter of vines and olive trees.

Matteo himself didn’t drink any wine until he was 20 years old, but shortly after he became fully involved with and very dedicated to the world of wine and oenology, followed by an in-depth study trip to Bordeaux as well as numerous visits to Italian wine regions, discovering large wineries as well as small-scale winemakers. Meanwhile, working as a commercial agent he become area retail manager for prestigious italian estates.

Twenty years of experience increasingly lead to his reunion with his native land, agriculture and winemaking, led him to evolve from wine promoter to wine producer. An evolution that peaked at the return to his family’s masseria, between the Murgia hills. That “handful of stones” that his grandfather (‘u tataranne in the local dialect, from which the eponymous wine label) had left him, soon turned out to be much more than that, revealing a particularly interesting vineyard – amongst others – with typical alberello-trained vines, planted by his relatives back in 1959. Matteo’s project ‘I Parieti’ came to life in this vineyards, a piece of that heroic agricultural heritage thus far in danger of extinction, to which he decides to restore value and dignity.