Masciarelli

Gianni Masciarelli would certainly be proud of the mother-daughter team that continues to implement his visions perfectly. It certainly wasn't easy for his wife, the Croatian-born Marina Cvetic, to take on this legacy with three small children. Because Gianni Masciarelli started in 1981 after an internship in the Champagne with only 24 years to build a completely new winery in Abruzzo. The basis was only three hectares on which his grandfather produced wine for his family, friends and the few tourists who lost their way to the village of San Martino sulla Marrucina near Chieti. It started from practically zero.

Instead of the usual pergola he used the French Guyot education with high vine density, selected extremely, thin radically and aged the wines in wooden barrels. Already in 1987 he met his partner Marina Cvetic, who was to become a congenial addition and to whom he dedicated the first top wine line. Together they visited wine fairs and events worldwide and soon Masciarelli wines were on the wine lists of the most famous restaurants, not only in Italy. With this success and his conviction that it is possible to produce great wines even below the highest mountains of Italy, he, together with Francesco Valentini, became the motor of an entire generation of winegrowers who dedicated themselves to a quality that had never been seen before in this region. In less than three decades he built a small empire, including a wine distribution company and an import for Italian colleagues in the USA. Completely surprisingly, he died of a heart attack in 2008, only 52 years old.

His last major project was the renovation of the Castello di Semivicoli, which was actually nothing more than a ruin, because Gianni Masciarelli was very closely connected with his homeland, Abruzzo, and once said almost philosophically that if he were wine, he would only want to thrive here. So he not only helped many small wineries, but also the region with projects like this. Because the Castello di Semivicoli has long since become the meeting point of many (wine) tourists.

Today the vineyards, including numerous individual vineyards (cru) of the Masciarelli family, are looked after by the eldest daughter Miriam Lee, who is tenderly called "genuine Masciarelli DOC" by her mother. These 300 hectares of vineyards were created from ten different small wineries and are distributed in all four provinces of Abruzzo: Chieti, Teramo, Pescara and L'Aquila on more than 60 plots in more than fourteen municipalities. The "headquarters" is still located in the village of San Martino sulla Marrucina. By the way - more than half of the employees are female.

The wine style of the house has remained the same, even though Miriam Lee brings a breath of fresh air. The varied climatic and soil conditions between the Adriatic Sea and the Gran Sasso massif at different altitudes up to 500 m above sea level produce powerful, concentrated yet elegant mineral wines. Masciarelli was the first Abruzzo winegrower ever to recognise the enormous potential of the local Montepulciano varieties, a powerful red grape variety that has nothing to do with the little town of the same name in Tuscany, and to recognise Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, an autochthonous white variety that is not, or only very remotely, related to other Trebbiano varieties, and to help them achieve high quality through modern cultivation and ageing.

The now five wine lines Classic, Gianni Masciarelli, Villa Gemma, Marina Cvetic, and Castello di Semivicoli offer something for every wine lover, from inexpensive base wines to very sophisticated and world-renowned Crus. The labels Marina Cvetic and Villa Gemma stand out again and again from the wide assortment.

The homage to the late founder is new. In the cellar Marina found two 700 l barrels of French oak, which Gianni had bought for one of his new projects. In each barrel a Montepulciano and a Trebbiano were matured for about 30 months. There were 891 bottles of "Trebbiano d'Abruzzo Riserva - La Botte di Gianni" and 869 bottles of "Montepulciano d'Abruzzo - La Botte di Gianni" (Giannis barrel), filled on his birthday. Needless to say, these few bottles were immediately sold out. SUPERIORE.DE

"Gianni Masciarelli was always ready to experiment with new grape varieties or wine ideas. Whatever he did, he never lost sight of protecting the unmistakable identity and tradition of the Abruzzo wine region. The result is one of the most dynamic wine producers in Italy, who still lives on as a guiding star and with his inspiration." (1,000 Great Wines That Won't Cost a Fortune)