Collecapretta Vigna Vecchia 2017

Vigna Vecchia is a direct-press white wine from Collecapretta, a small farm in the Colli Martani hills of southern Umbria, just outside Spoleto, in the hamlet of Terzo la Pieve. The wine is made from old-vine Trebbiano Spoletino — a grape native to this corner of Umbria, known for its late ripening, resistance to botrytis, and naturally high acidity. Vines are trained on trellises following the traditional Umbrian espalier method, grown in clay-rich soils laced with outcroppings of tufo and travertine limestone at around 500 meters elevation in the Martani Mountains.

In the cellar, whole bunches are hand-harvested and gently pressed to extract only the free-run must (mosto fiore). Fermentation is spontaneous, without temperature control, using only indigenous yeasts from the grapes and the cellar. No sulfur is added at any stage. The wine ages in stainless steel, cement, or fiberglass vessels and is bottled unfined and unfiltered, timed to the waning lunar cycle.

Vigna Vecchia reads quiet and restrained in its youth — golden yellow in color, with a muted, neutral character that slowly gives way to intense mineral purity and saline tension. Notes of white peach, pineapple, and lemon run through the palate alongside a firm herbaceous edge and a long, salty finish. Trebbiano Spoletino builds complexity with bottle age; older vintages develop more pronounced stone-fruit concentration and depth.

Collecapretta bottles fewer than 8,000 total bottles across all wines in a good year. Vittorio Mattioli and his daughter Annalisa manage the 8-hectare property, which also raises animals and grows farro and ancient grains — operating as a genuine closed-cycle farm.