2020 Monastero Suore Cistercensi Coenobium

WINEMAKER: Cistercense della Stretta Osservanza & Paolo Bea
VARIETAL: Malvasia, Trebbiano, Verdicchio
REGION: Lazio, IT
VITICULTURE: Organic/Biodynamic

All grape are harvested together and co-fermented without added yeasts or temperature stabilisation. It is aged on its fine lees in steel and fiberglass tanks, and bottled just before the next harvest without fining or filtering. The 2019 growing season here was warm and solar, spotlights Vitorchiano’s volcanic soils in a more direct manner than usual, with a smoke-iron character and notes of green apple, fennel and honey.

About an hour drive North of Rome, the monastery was opened in 1957, when the community moved in, and today has around 80 sisters. The order is the ‘Cistercense della Stretta Osservanza’, also known as Trappist, who obeys the Benedictine principle of the 'ora et labora’ (pray and work) and intends the work above all in the manual sense, therefore also agricultural. Here at this quiet religious outpost, this order works vineyards, orchards and gardens organically. Under the guidance of the Bea family, the sisters tend the vineyard without machinery and are invested in low-intervention practices. They ferment with only naturally occurring yeasts and follow organic wine-making practices. The “winery” is nothing more than a toolshed packed to the gills with old steel tanks, fiberglass containers of various sizes.