The Abruzzese family that bet everything on Cerasuolo (and won)

“It’s the wine that best tells the story of Abruzzo — the dual soul of a land that is both mountainous and maritime, with its strong contrasts held together. Right now, it’s the region’s truest chance to express who it really is. It comes from a grape variety with great personality, yet a short maceration enhances its freshness, pleasantness, and frankness.”

These are the words of Luigi Di Camillo, oenologist and owner — together with his parents and sister — of Tenuta I Fauri, as he describes the Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo. And we couldn’t agree more, since in the glass we found a wine that is genuine, sincere, and authentic — contemporary in its drinkability but deeply rooted in tradition.

Tenuta I Fauri, a beautiful artisan reality

Behind this wine, first and foremost, there are wonderful people who have built, over the years, a winery with a strong artisanal soul — capable of bottling the essence of their land. We are in Abruzzo, in the heart of Chieti, the southernmost province, among the hills that descend from the Maiella mountains to the Adriatic Sea.

Tenuta I Fauri is the project of a family devoted to viticulture for generations — a vocation that even lives in their long-standing family nickname: Baldovino. It’s both a challenge and a way of life, the foundation of the work of Domenico, a frank and outgoing winegrower, and his children Luigi and Valentina, who inherited from him the passion for “making wine”.

photo https://www.facebook.com/tenuta.ifauri/

Luigi, 42, holds a degree in Oenology and Viticulture from the Universities of Perugia and Padua and follows production with scrupulous care and passion. Valentina, 45, graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Technology at Chieti, chose to follow in her brother’s footsteps and today leads the commercial and communication side of the winery.

Winegrowers by choice — and by tradition — they keep one eye on the fermenting cement vats and one ear on the thunder, used to suffering through hailstorms and rejoicing at new shoots, producing genuine wines for everyday meals, wines to drink and to enjoy.

The 28 hectares of vineyards, cultivated between the Adriatic and the Maiella, are spread across six municipalities (Chieti, Francavilla al Mare, Miglianico, Ari, Bucchianico and Villamagna). The soils, composed of sand, clay, and silt, yield wines that are frank and elegant, reflecting their places of origin. The vines — some trained as pergola, others in rows — follow the principles of organic farming. The vineyards lie between 100 and 200 metres above sea level, the typical altitude of the Chieti hills.

The winery is genuine and hard-working, made for production rather than show. Within its walls coexist the old 1960s cement tanks, carefully restored and maintained, alongside modern stainless-steel fermenters. Wood, instead, has always been used with great restraint. Whenever the seasons allow, fermentations occur spontaneously.

The wines produced

The wines are immediate but not without ambition: the estate was among the first to “free” Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from the rhetoric of barriques, focusing instead on fully enhancing the typicity of the variety.

Alongside the reds, there are whites from native grapes — Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, Pecorino, and Passerina — wines that are pleasant and approachable, yet complex and capable of ageing gracefully.

Since 2015, the estate has also undertaken a sparkling wine project: with two autoclaves, they now produce in-house the Spumante Metodo Italiano from Pecorino grapes and the Spumante Brut Rosé from Montepulciano grapes, in limited production of just a few thousand bottles per year.

More recently, in 2021, came the project of bottle re-fermentation wines: Le Belle is the ancestral method from Pecorino grapes, and Piano del Cavaliere is a second fermentation in bottle from Montepulciano. There is also the Montepulciano Riserva, whose grapes come from an old vineyard in the Santa Cecilia district of Francavilla al Mare.

The Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo Baldovino

Finally, the Cerasuolo, awarded in the Gambero Rosso Vini d’Italia 2026 guide as Best Rosé of the Year.

“This special award moves us deeply,” says Valentina, “because it’s a prize for the wine that, more than any other, holds a piece of our heart. Cerasuolo is the wine that tells our origins — a family of farmers, first and foremost, like so many others on our hills. My grandparents were grape growers who sold their harvests to the cooperatives. My father then took the next step, becoming a winemaker — and twenty-five years ago, took another, even greater one: finally bottling the wine from our own grapes. From there, Tenuta I Fauri took shape — not from a plan drawn up at a desk, but from a path made of trials, daily work, and a bit of recklessness. And throughout this journey, Cerasuolo has been the wine that gave us courage, comforted us in difficult times, accompanied our noisy family lunches — it’s the wine of home, the silent thread that’s run through generations like a baton. Even when it stood in the shadow of the great Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, like a younger brother born from the ‘less noble’ grapes, it was always there with us.”

“Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo has endured fashion trends, adapted to them, even changed colour until it nearly lost it altogether. Luigi and I want to dedicate this award to all of Abruzzo — and especially to those Abruzzese winemakers who resisted the temptation to distort this great wine in pursuit of easier, more profitable paths. To those producers who insisted that it retain its authenticity within tradition: a tradition that doesn’t taste of dust or boredom, but of identity and vision. Because today, I can say it was worth it. Today we know that this wine — so bright, so joyful, so capable of bringing cheer — wasn’t just our family’s wine: it was, and is, a great wine, capable of representing Abruzzo around the world. It is the root that reminds us who we are and where we come from.”