Cantina Tollo

Cantina Tollo was founded in 1960, in response to a slow exodus through the post-war years, when Abruzzo was poor and many rural families dependent on agriculture were forced to give it up. A group of growers in the village of Tollo, in the province of Chieti, decided that pooling their fruit might keep the place viable, and to this day the cooperative is as much a community endeavour as an economic one.

It now brings together around seven hundred grower families, farming roughly 2500 hectares and exporting to more than forty countries. Tollo village sits in the low hills of the Teatina, with the Adriatic visible to the east and the Maiella massif rising behind to the west. That proximity of sea and mountain gives the vineyards a marked swing between day and night temperatures through the ripening season. The hillside soils are largely clay and limestone, well drained and airy, and much of the planting is still trained on the traditional Abruzzese pergola; one of the most intriguing and beautiful sights in viticulture.

Montepulciano is the backbone of Tollo’s range, but a range of Abruzzo’s native varietals sit alongside it: Trebbiano, Pecorino, Passerina, and the rarer Cococciola. The winery has been organic since the 1990s, unusually early for a cooperative of this size, and the group has since adopted the Equalitas sustainability standard.

The cooperative was also the first in Abruzzo to take on Maiolica, a local variety that had dwindled to a handful of old vines and was in real danger of disappearing. And under a scheme called Vigneto Avanzato, Tollo has begun paying some growers according to the area they farm rather than the tonnage they deliver; the reverse of the usual cooperative incentive, intended to give smallholders a predictable income and remove the pressure to chase volume.