Holding a beautiful and healthy bunch of Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, Lucia tells me the story about how Praesidium Winery was born.
“We chose to be winemakers way before we got married. Our families were strongly opposed to this. We did it anyways. I got my education as a teacher, and together with Enzo [her husband] we started travelling around Italy to learn not just how to make wine, but how to bottle and market it.”
In front of me, I see a strong and proud woman, whose eyes are vividly expressing the joy for being amidst the fruits of their courage and love: the grapes and their children, Antonia and Ottaviano.
We are in the youngest of their vineyards, called “Lorenzo” after their grandchild, born on the same year 2019. He’s Ottaviano’s son, and considering his love for small tractors, he might have inherited the same passion for agriculture has his father’s family.
When Lucia and Enzo chose their life and work path, in the early ’70s, in the small town of Prezza, nestled on the rocky mountains of the Peligna Valley, Abruzzo, no one dared to envision a future as a proper Wine Estate.
Every home had a cellar, the luckiest even a few vines to farm, and almost everybody knew how to make wine. But it was impossible to imagine making a living out of it. You would either sell the grapes, or make an easy drinking light red (cerasuolo) for home consumption. Only the “Signori”, the notable men landowners, would sell bottled wine.
But Enzo was a free spirit, as Lucia recalls. Untamed as the wild grapes growing on these stoney slopes. And she chose to be by his side. In an era when women were meant to tend to the house and children, she got a university degree, went to teaching and started investing in their dream Winery.
Working in the classroom in the morning, working in the vineyard and cellar in the afternoon. Together with Enzo, the love of her life.
The couple took several educational trips to the most famous winemaking regions of Italy, like Tuscany and Piemonte. Always in disguise, says Enzo.
“We were once in Montalcino – he tells me – enjoying a little holiday together. During the dinner I ordered a bottle of wine. It just tasted like something I had never tasted before. And then I understood: the wood!”
Barrel aging was something mystical back than in rural Abruzzo, but the Pasquale family loves a challenge. And slowly Enzo and Lucia started placing the cornerstones of what is now one of the best-known organic and natural wine companies in the global fine dining world: Praesidium Wines. Their success was built with time and stubborness, and founded on the following principles:
- Spontaneous fermentation (why would you need to add yeasts in a Centurys’ old cellar?)
- Long skin-contact (Montepulciano grapes share the same character of the Abruzzo people – strong and gentle)
- Extensive barrel aging (mastering the relation with wood, without covering the natural profile of the wine)
- Uncompromising quality of the raw material (after witnessing the green harvest, I can swear on it!)
I’ll be delving deeper into their techniques and winemaking style soon, but there’s something I feel the need to share.
One of the things that stroke me when listening to the story of Praesidium wines, it is the family’s utmost respect for their land and the people living there: in an age when the massive use of concrete and plastic is considered the only way to make things easier, Lucia, Enzo and then Antonia and Ottaviano chose to stay in the rocky alleys of their old town, instead of building a shed by cementing the countryside.
They chose the discomfort, the unease, of creating a cellar in the old caves underneath the buildings, where farmers had stored animals, cheese and wines for centuries before them. And when extra space was needed? They would ask their neighbours to sell them the cellar next door.
And each of this new spaces was named after their previous owners, thus honouring people and places.
Before saying goodbye to the Pasquale family (the August midday sun can be unforgiving) I ask Lucia one final note on the relation with their family: when did they acknowledge their success?
“Soon after we officially opened the winery (1988, ed.) I decided it was time to join a wine competition. That time, even Enzo went against me, believing we were not ready for it! He made up his mind when a few weeks later we received a letter from Asti saying that we were assaigned the Golden Medal!”
I am moved by the sparkles in her eyes. Life is nothing but a sequence of moments, and if you miss the one, the entire course of events will change.
There is so much more to tell about Praesidium and their profoundly ethical way of making wine.
Luckily enough, I love to share stories and emotions.
So please come back here soon to read what’s coming next.
With love, Susanna.