About Us
We’re two cousins of Italian origins, born in Switzerland but grown up partly in Rome. Our first approach with the production of wine was through our grandfather, nonno Severino, to whom we decided to dedicate this Enoteca.
For many years he produced the wine for our family, in our cellar the way it used to be done in the olden days. Of oenology, intended as a science, there was very little. Nonno Severino stubbornly relied on rural knowledge and traditions that were passed down to him.
In all honesty, the result wasn’t too wonderful, nonno’s wines were heavy and certainly not sophisticated. He wasn’t a great artist of the vineyard, but we never told him that. He always thought that his wine was the best in the world and was famous for saying that he would never have exchanged it with another, not even for Cognac.
He intended wine as nourishment, something necessary for sustenance, without many frills. Putting aside the quality of his wine, we’re grateful to nonno Severino for fostering in us the idea of wine as a rural and agricultural product, tightly connected to the values of conviviality and family.
Nonno was nicknamed ‘’Peperone’’ because of his big round nose that would start glowing red after a glass of wine. Our logo, other than obviously representing a wine glass, is also a nod to that.
Our Philosophy
Maybe the seed was planted by our grandpa, potentially without even realizing it. It took us some time but we slowly started forming the belief that the wines we were drinking, no matter how prestigious or expensive, felt empty and weren’t leaving anything behind.
It’d be nice to be able to say that the memory and the values from our nonno pushed us in the search for different wines, but things actually happened in the opposite order. Pretty much by chance during a dinner on new year’s eve we were served a bottle of what had been described to us as natural wine, that thing hit us like a slap in the face, it was immediately obvious that that was what we were missing in wine. Eureka!
We then started traveling through Italy, in search of artisanal wine productions. One of the more rewarding aspects of these travels is without a doubt the bond and friendships that we could create with these artisans, people who are free and authentic and who live the countryside.
Something they all have in common is the deep relationship they have with their own land. Wine is first and foremost an agricultural product, the role of these craftsmen is to preserve and allow nature to thrive with an ethical and sustainable agriculture.
In the wine cellar the wine doesn’t need much more than being guided, which certainly still requires craftsmanship and expertise, but altering it as little as possible to respect its characteristics and allowing it to remain faithful to the land that it comes from.
With our Enoteca we commit to only offering products that have not undergone alterations either in the vineyard or in the cellar from chemical treatments. What matters to us the most however is being able to tell the stories of these wines, the places they come from and the people that have crafted them with their own hands.