San Giovanni
Agricola San Giovanni is a love story. Love at first sight swept two professionals from their lives as an architect and a lawyer into an joyous passion for farming. They fell in love with the unspoiled coasts of Punta Tresino almost as immediately.
This little corner of Campania, inside Cilento National Park (and UNESCO site) became their new home: the sight where they would raise their family, and grow wine grapes for distinctive, pure wines that express the unique terroir of Paestum.
Ida explains how her and Mario make Agricola San Giovanni work:
“While Mario takes care of the work behind the scenes, in the cellar and in the vineyards, I welcome clients and tourists and organize wine tastings. My goal is for these wine tastings to become sensory experiences because of the location, and by the local specialties paired with our wines.”
The hospitality of Ida and Mario is natural and effusive, driven by their enthusiasm for the amazing place they live. Enthusiasm from wine lovers has been great too. Now the biggest task on the estate is too expand as demand for their wine has begun to exceed what their vineyard space can produce.
Agricola San Giovanni takes it’s name from an abandoned medieval monastery near Punta Tresino.
Punta Tresino is located within a natural reserve. Isolated in the wood, the estate is only a few steps from the sea. When Ida and Mario first moved to the farmhouse on the property in 1999 there was no electricity, no internet connection, no phone, and no cellular reception. Since then they have been working to make their new home habitable, and their farm productive. It’s been a challenging workload, but with great rewards.
Cascina San Giovanni gives a voice to this ideal, unspoiled place. The sun gives the wines concentration, the sea gives them salinity, the marl gives them a lingering minerality, and the Medditeranean scrub all around contributes to various components of their aromatic complexity. The wines bouquet and the local fields abound with thyme, rosemary, capers, ragwort, helcrysum and broom weed.
“This past year, almost a thousand people have visited us and Punto Tresino, a success that convinced us to develop and improve this aspect of our roles as ambassadors to this special place.”
You can’t speak of the wines of San Giovanni without speaking about just how magical it is in Punta Tresino. Their wines are an encapsulation of this enviable place, and although their popularity is demanding more vines planted, Cascina San Giovanni believe in preserving the land above all else. Without it there would be no allure to begin with. They have pledged to max out their vineyard space at four hectares to ensure a close relationship with the vines and to not change the landscape or natural balance of the ecosystem.
Cascina San Giovanni isn’t just a group of vineyards, it’s a landscape. The limited plantings should never compete with or disrupt the dramatic scenery. This small vineyard space has the added benefit of allowing Mario and Ida to do the majority of the farming themselves. Before the birth of their children they used to bring the stereo out to the vineyards and dance, swept away by the sunset, the music, the atmosphere of Cilento and love.
“When we moved here, the idea was to produce wines which were the territory in the glass: the sea right in front of our vineyard, the sun searing for many months during the year, the uncontaminated nature, which is the real landlord in Cilento Park.”
The winemaking philosophy is a continuation of the preservationist philosophies of the land. This means adherance to local, traditional winemaking practices, as well as winemaking that features the character of the grapes and in-turn the soils, and all of the natural influences of area.
