Wine lovers in Edinburgh will be the first to add a new Scots-made Lazio Maturano to their Christmas wish list this season.
The Di Ciacca family from East Lothian has returned to its Italian roots to release I Ciacca Nostalgia IGT Lazio Maturano (2017), which is the first time that Maturano wine will be commercially available in the UK.
As an ideal match for the Christmas feast, I Ciacca Nostalgia is now available to purchase from Edinburgh’s Valvona & Crolla and the St Andrews Wine Company. Nostalgia is a lively, golden-coloured and medium bodied dry white with notes of orange blossom and grapefruit, as well as an interesting minerality.
The Di Ciacca family is working with ‘one of the world’s top five winemakers’ (Decanter) and enologist, Alberto Antonini, to produce its new range of speciality organic wines made from their own Maturano grapes. Maturano is a unique, indigenous and ancient variety from Picinisco in Lazio, almost lost and only recently brought back into commercial cultivation.
The four-hectare I Ciacca vineyard had been abandoned for 50 years before the Di Ciacca family reclaimed the land and replanted. The Maturano grapes have been grown naturally and treated as biological without the addition of yeasts.
Sofia Di Ciacca of I Ciacca said: “We’re delighted to launch our first ever vintage from I Ciacca and introduce the wonderful Maturano grape to wine-lovers in the Scotland.
“Nostalgia reflects the magic of Picinisco with its stunning views, sunshine and wonderful soil and is a fitting tribute to our ancestors from I Ciacca who made the very first wines with the Maturano grape here over a century ago.”
The Scottish-Italian family is also getting set to make Picinisco, Val di Comino, one of the top new travel destinations for food and wine lovers in 2020 after reviving the historic region between Rome and Naples.
As the latest Italian foodie travel destination, I Ciacca now includes Sotto Le Stelle – a boutique hotel with six individually-styled luxury guests suites; historic farmhouse cookery school; indigenous grape vineyards, state of the art winery, and single estate organic olive grove, all set amongst the magnificent Comino Valley in the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park.
For over 500 years, I Ciacca was home to generations of the Di Ciacca family, famed for its excellent farm produce and wine. Over time, members of the family left, emigrating to Scotland, England, France, Canada and America. In 1969, the last of the Di Ciacca family to live there died and the village was abandoned. Almost half a century later, the third generation Scottish-Italian family has returned to Italy to resurrect the lost hamlet and its indigenous Maturano grape.
The label on the Nostalgia bottle shows the four Di Ciacca brothers in the early 1900s, a few years before they left Picinisco and moved to Scotland. Now grandson, Cesidio Di Ciacca and his family, have moved back to Picinisco and the very family farm that his grandfather left 100 years ago.
I Ciacca Nostalgia IGT Lazio Maturano (2017), 75cl, ABV 14%, is available to purchase from Edinburgh’s Valvona & Crolla www.valvonacrolla.co.uk/maturano-nostalgia-igt-2017-i-ciacca/review and St Andrews Wine Company www.standrewswinecompany.com/products/maturano.
For more information on I Ciacca, visit: www.iciacca.com
