Cantina Apicella — Tramonti DOC Wine Tasting
Tramonti is one of only a handful of mountain wine appellations on the Amalfi Coast and the Apicella family has been making wine from ancient Per'e Palummo (Piedirosso) and Tintore vines on steep terraces here since the 1960s. A visit to their cantina in Sant'Arcangelo hamlet is an intimate, unhurried experience that most tourists never find.
A DOC That Almost Disappeared
The Tramonti DOC covers red, white and rosato wines made from indigenous grape varieties — chiefly Tintore di Tramonti, a deeply pigmented, tannic red grape found almost nowhere else on earth, and the lighter Per'e Palummo for rosato.
The vineyards cling to terraces at 400–600 metres altitude, giving the wines a freshness and acidity that sets them apart from the richer, hotter wines of the lower Campanian plains; the reds have an earthy, mineral quality reminiscent of volcanic Etna wines.
Mario Apicella and his son Giuseppe still harvest entirely by hand — the terraces are inaccessible to machinery — and vinification is done in a small cellar carved into the hillside beneath the family home.
Visiting the Cantina
Tastings are informal and by appointment only: email or call ahead (contacts on cantina-apicella.it) and Mario or Giuseppe will meet you at the cantina gate, pour four or five wines with local bread, cheese and salami, and talk you through the vineyard with genuine passion.
The tasting fee is modest (around €15 per person) and bottles can be purchased to take home; the Tramonti Rosso Riserva and the rare Tintore in purezza are the bottles worth packing carefully in your luggage.
Other respected Tramonti producers worth seeking out include Reale Vini and San Francesco — between them they represent a living archive of one of Italy's most overlooked wine traditions.
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