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Azienda Agricola SETE

Natural wine estate in Priverno, Lazio, farming twelve recovered old-vine plots in the Amaseno Valley. Known for Safara, a skin-contact white blended from Trebbiano, Ottonese, and Malvasia Puntinata grown on vines fifty to one hundred years old.

The producer

Azienda Agricola SETE farms 4.5 hectares of recovered old-vine plots in the Amaseno Valley, a stretch of agricultural land in southern Lazio where heritage grapes survived for a century in parcels that commercial winemaking had largely set aside. Emiliano Giorgi and Arcangelo Galuppi, childhood friends from Priverno, founded the project in 2013 after Giorgi spent two consecutive harvests at Le Coste di Gradoli, one of the first estates in Italy to work without correction, before returning south with a clear objective: find the old vines, work with the people who had farmed them, and make wine without adding or taking anything away.

The estate's defining wine is Safara, a skin-contact white built from 60 per cent Trebbiano, 30 per cent Ottonese, and 10 per cent Malvasia Puntinata. Ottonese is one of the grapes in Safara. SETE found local elderly farmers and began purchasing their grapes or renting their vineyards, gaining agricultural wisdom from them. Two days of skin contact give Safara a faint amber colour and mild tannin grip. Eight months in stainless steel keep the aromatic profile clean. No sulfites are added, and the wine leaves the cellar unfined and unfiltered.

Known for

Skin-contact whites from heritage vineyards planted with rare Lazio varieties including Ottonese.

Notable facts

The story

What Two Harvests at Le Coste Brought Back to Priverno

Emiliano Giorgi spent the 2010 and 2011 harvests working at Le Coste di Gradoli in northern Lazio. When he came back to Priverno with Arcangelo Galuppi and started looking for vineyards to farm, they found local elderly farmers and began purchasing their grapes or renting their vineyards. They gained agricultural wisdom from these farmers.

What Two Harvests at Le Coste Brought Back to Priverno

Emiliano Giorgi spent the 2010 and 2011 harvests working at Le Coste di Gradoli in northern Lazio. When he came back to Priverno with Arcangelo Galuppi and started looking for vineyards to farm, they found local elderly farmers and began purchasing their grapes or renting their vineyards. They gained agricultural wisdom from these farmers.

From the atlas

Azienda Agricola SETE

At A Glance

The Producer

Azienda Agricola SETE farms recovered old-vine plots in the Amaseno Valley, a stretch of agricultural land in southern Lazio where heritage grapes survived for a century in parcels that commercial winemaking had largely set aside. Emiliano Giorgi and Arcangelo Galuppi, childhood friends from Priverno, founded the project in 2013 after Giorgi spent two consecutive harvests at Le Coste di Gradoli, a small estate on volcanic soil in northern Lazio that was one of the first in Italy to work without correction. He came back to Priverno with a clear objective: find the old vines, work with local elderly farmers by purchasing their grapes or renting their vineyards, and make wine without adding or taking anything away.

The name SETE means thirst in Italian. It is a two-person project farming 4.5 hectares across twelve individual plots, each one recovered from abandonment by hand. The vines range from fifty to over one hundred years old. Every plot is cultivated without synthetic chemicals or fertilisers.

Place

Priverno sits in the lower Lazio plain about 100 kilometres south of Rome, close to the Aurunci mountains and the inland stretches of the Amaseno river valley. The valley sits far enough from the coast to avoid the sea moderation that shapes wine further west, and far enough inland to hold summer heat that pushes grapes toward full ripeness.

What the valley does hold is old planting. The particular combination of grape varieties that survived here, including Ottonese alongside the Trebbiano and Malvasia that appear across central Italy, reflects decades of mixed agricultural farming where varieties were grown for local use rather than for market appeal. That combination is what makes SETE's wines geographically specific rather than categorically natural.

Soil And Site

The twelve plots are spread across the valley rather than concentrated in a single location. Each was farmed by hand out of abandonment, meaning the vine material is old and the soils have not had synthetic inputs for at least as long as SETE has managed them. The parcels where Ottonese survives are the most significant in terms of what the wine becomes.

Story

Giorgi and Galuppi grew up near Priverno and knew the local farming landscape before either of them had any winemaking ambition. The turn came after Giorgi's two harvests at Le Coste di Gradoli, working alongside Gianmarco Antonuzi in northern Lazio. What Giorgi brought back was not a philosophy to apply to new land but a practical model for how to work with existing vines and existing farmers without industrial intervention.

SETE found local elderly farmers and began purchasing their grapes or renting their vineyards. The project gained agricultural wisdom from them.

Vineyards And Cellar

The twelve plots are cultivated without synthetic chemicals or fertilisers, and recovery from abandonment was done by hand. Vine age across the estate runs from fifty to over a century. Old vines tend to produce lower yields and more concentrated fruit, and in a warm inland valley that concentration translates to ripeness with body rather than weight.

In the cellar, fermentation begins spontaneously with wild yeasts. Nothing is added: no cultured yeast, no sulfites at any stage. Safara spends two days on the skins before pressing. Tannin extraction at two days is gentle rather than aggressive, giving the wine texture and a light amber hue without the grip of a longer maceration. The wine then ages for eight months in stainless steel, which keeps the fruit and aromatic character from skin contact intact rather than overlaying oak. The wine leaves the cellar unfined and unfiltered.

Wines

Safara is the estate's defining wine and the one with full confirmed production detail. It is a skin-contact white built from 60 per cent Trebbiano, 30 per cent Ottonese, and 10 per cent Malvasia Puntinata, with an alcohol of 12 per cent.

Trebbiano provides the frame: it is the grape that structures central Italian white winemaking, with firm acidity and a neutral profile that takes on character from the land and cellar rather than asserting its own flavour. Ottonese, the rarest of the three, sits at the edge of local agricultural memory. Its contribution is textural rather than aromatic, adding body and a slight weight to the mid-palate that Trebbiano alone would not produce. Malvasia Puntinata, the spotted Malvasia rather than the more common Malvasia di Candia, brings aromatic lift, stone fruit and a floral register that rises out of the blend when the wine is poured. Two days of skin contact moves all three grapes into orange wine territory: a faint amber colour, mild tannin grip on the finish, and an aromatic depth that a conventionally pressed white from the same material would not reach.

In The Glass

Safara opens with acacia honey and ripe tropical fruit, with a warmth that reads as southern Italian sun on old vines rather than overripeness. The 12 per cent alcohol keeps the wine light-footed. In the mouth, the two days of skin contact are felt as mild tannin alongside the acidity and stops the wine from feeling soft or flat. The stainless steel ageing keeps the aromatic profile clean and forward: stone fruit and floral notes from the Malvasia Puntinata, a more neutral body from the Trebbiano, and a textural roundness from the Ottonese. The finish is dry, with the tannin grip from skin contact fading into a light bitterness that lengthens the close. It is fresh throughout, and the absence of sulfites, fining, and filtration gives it a slight haziness and a lively quality that a corrected wine from the same grapes would not have.

A Bottle To Understand It

Sete Safara is the first bottle. It is a skin-contact white at 12 per cent alcohol, made from old-vine Trebbiano, Ottonese, and Malvasia Puntinata grown in twelve recovered plots in the Amaseno Valley. Two days on the skins give it a faint amber colour and mild tannin without making it heavy. Eight months in stainless steel keep the fruit and acidity clean. The wine is dry, aromatic, and lively, with stone fruit, acacia honey, and a finish that has more grip than a conventionally pressed white.

Anecdote

Emiliano Giorgi spent the 2010 and 2011 harvests working at Le Coste di Gradoli in northern Lazio. When he came back to Priverno with Arcangelo Galuppi and started looking for vineyards to farm, they found local elderly farmers and began purchasing their grapes or renting their vineyards. They gained agricultural wisdom from these farmers.

Final Word

SETE is a small Lazio estate farming twelve old-vine plots that commercial winemaking had set aside. The Ottonese in Safara is one of the few places that variety appears in a bottle at all. SETE farms 4.5 hectares across twelve plots, with vines ranging from fifty to over one hundred years old.

Sources

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