Cascina del Colle
Cascina del Colle
Glug Staff
Photography: Cascina del Colle
Wednesday 03 January 2024
This article is from
Abruzzo
issue 31
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Equidistant from the Adriatic coast to the east and the great mountain of Majella to the west, the village of Villamagna is in many ways a winemaker’s paradise, with a perfect sea breeze passing between the rustic, traditional houses and carrying up into the slopes of Majella creating a unique and special microclimate. This is the home of Cascina Del Colle.
Cascina Del Colle was officially established in 1997 by the D’Onofrio family. The history of the D’Onofrio family in the world of agriculture though began many years before, in the 1950s, when founder Don Gabriele returned to Italy from Venezuela. Settling in Abruzzo, he decided to invest his earnings in the village of his birth, Villamagna, and step-by-step founded a large farm dedicated to the cultivation of olive groves, orchards and vineyards.
In 1997, his son Nazario decided to use the family land to found Cascina Del Colle and dedicate himself exclusively to the production of quality bottled wine. Today the company owns 30 hectares of organically cultivated vineyards; it doesn’t buy grapes or must, only using fruit from its own land.
The company employs around fifty people in marketing, logistics, production and land cultivation.
The D’Onofrio family remains very hands-on, with the founder Nazario cultivating the land, while his wife Tiziana is in charge of reception and cooking, his son Gianluca is an oenologist working alongside head oenologist Vittorio Festa, and his other son Alessio is in charge of administration.
Around four years ago, Cascina Del Colle decided to develop a line of international wines, dubbed Terrebeciate, from varieties already cultivated on its own land. The intention was both to open up to international wine-lovers and to show the distinctive character of Arbruzzo, as all Terrebeciate wines are blended with native Abruzzi grapes. Merlot and Syrah are blended with Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, which gives the wines colour, structure and body, while Sauvignon is blended with Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, which softens the sometimes too-intense perfume characteristic of Sauvignon.
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