Calling your two wines Sancho Panza and Don Quixote tells you something about the spirit of the place: this is high, lonely, slightly quixotic country, and the wines made here are gloriously out of step with easy commercial taste.
Backstory
Il Tufiello is the estate of Guido and Igiea Zampaglione in Calitri, in Alta Irpinia, in the province of Avellino. It is a historic cereal farm, organic since 1990 and one of the first in the south to convert. In 2001 the family planted a small parcel of Fiano, and wine bottling began in 2004 with a single hectare. Guido, who also runs Tenuta Grillo in Piedmont's Monferrato, works with his wife Igiea on the vineyard and cellar; his father Michele, a former aeronautical engineer, now tends the vines full time, and sons Pietro and Michele help at harvest.
The Region
Alta Irpinia is the high, sparsely populated interior of Campania. The vineyards sit at almost 800 meters, between roughly 750 and 800 meters above sea level, on poor, stony soils, conditions that give very low yields and intensely concentrated fruit.
Vineyards and Farming
Two generations have chosen to specialize in a single grape, Fiano, now across about three and a half hectares in three separate vineyards. Farming goes beyond organic standards, with low yields and scrupulous grape selection.
Winemaking
This is Fiano made as an orange wine. The grapes macerate on their skins for around sixty days with native yeasts, then age in stainless steel, with no filtration. The result is textural, savory and built to last.
The Wines
Sancho Panza is the skin-contact Fiano aged about twelve months in steel; Montemattina, the reserve, ages around twenty-four months. Both are unfiltered, single-variety expressions of high-altitude Irpinia, deep, structured whites that drink more like reds in spirit.
