Producer Valentina Passalacqua

PUGLIA

Valentina Passalacqua's estate is located in Apricena, in the Gargano National Park, on land owned by the Passalacqua family since the early 1900s. This area in the past was considered uncultivable due to the particularly stony soil, and was used for transhumance and for grazing livestock, until Valentina's father discovered the rich deposit from which the Biancone of Apricena, a limestone from which one of the finest marble in Italy is processed. Starting in the early 1970s, it was possible to crush and excavate the land, thus making it suitable for agriculture. In 1999, the Valentina Passalacqua Biological Agricultural Company was officially founded, covering a total area of ​​about 70 hectares, of which 45 are vineyards. Valentina after studying law at Luiss in Rome and a Master's degree in London thinking she could contribute in a managerial way to the fortunes of the family industries, she understood that it was not what she wanted and within her grew the physiological need to live in contact with the nature and with the simplicity that animates the peasant life, the same that he had seen play when he was a child to his grandmother Giulia. So he started making wine by building a biological oasis around it; a corner where working and living is invaluable, deciding to live in close contact with the land and the vineyards, even building the house in the middle of them, using a bioclimatic system that is architecturally compatible with everything around it to listen better the flow of the seasons, feeding on the landscape that helped to draw. The vines are located at 200 meters above sea level, on the slopes of the Gargano and in a particularly favorable microclimatic situation, thanks to the excellent south-west exposure that guarantees a continuous sunning throughout the year, and to the constant ventilation that ensures important temperature excursions even in the hottest years. The vines are predominantly native; Bombino, Fiano Minutolo, Falanghina, Greco, Nero di Troia, Negroamaro, Primitivo, Montepulciano, Aleatico, to which are added some vineyards of Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay. Valentina's wines are authentic, without make-up and long-lived, local wines, born from the spontaneous fermentation of grapes harvested strictly by hand, witnesses of the extreme biodiversity of the Gargano, which arise in a fertile and mineral womb in which my vines sink their roots deep, for a vital impulse that reaches the cosmos.