The producer
Antonella Manuli spent ten years working in sustainability at Terme di Saturnia, a thermal resort complex in the southern Maremma. She fell in love with the landscape and in the mid-2000s conceived an agricultural project rooted in what she had learned there: that a farm could run as an integrated system rather than a wine operation with a field attached. The estate she built, Fattoria La Maliosa, sits across two separate territories in Grosseto province. The Saturnia holding covers a 170-hectare landscape of vineyards, olive groves, arable land and forest on predominantly clay soils. The Pitigliano holding, roughly twenty kilometres southeast, adds three hectares of vines on volcanic ash and tuff. Total vineyard area is 9.5 hectares.
From 2013, Manuli worked with agronomist Lorenzo Corino to formalise the farming approach into what became Metodo Corino: dense vine populations, contour-line planting, no additive use in the cellar, and spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts. Grapes are hand-harvested, macerated for three to four weeks and matured in wood for five to sixteen months. No sulfites are added at any stage. Oenologist Filippo Paoletti handles cellar work. The estate has been certified organic since 2010 and added SQNPI sustainable-quality certification in 2022. The range is led by La Maliosa Rosso, a varietal Ciliegiolo, and La Maliosa Uni, a Procanico orange wine grown on the volcanic Pitigliano parcels.
Known for
No-additive, no-sulfite natural wines from recovered and locally sourced Tuscan varieties grown on clay and volcanic soils in the southern Maremma.
Notable facts
- The estate's variety selection traces to Vigna Madre, a 60-year-old semi-abandoned vineyard that Manuli recovered at the start of the project and used as a genetic blueprint for every subsequent planting between 2009 and 2023.
- Manuli developed Metodo Corino with agronomist and researcher Lorenzo Corino from 2013, formalising vine density, contour-line planting and no-additive cellar work into a named agronomic system.
- The Vigna Corino at Montecavallo is a heroic vineyard on a 30% slope, with stony soil on a geological matrix approximately ten million years old.
- La Maliosa Rosso is a varietal Ciliegiolo, IGT Toscana, fermented spontaneously and matured in wood with no added sulfites or additives.
- The estate farms two geologically distinct territories: predominantly clay soils at Saturnia and volcanic ash over tuff at Pitigliano, roughly twenty kilometres apart.
From the atlas
Fattoria La Maliosa
At A Glance
| |
| Location | Southern Maremma, Tuscany: Saturnia and Pitigliano |
| Vineyards | 9.5 hectares across two territories |
| Key Grapes | Ciliegiolo, Sangiovese, grey Cannonau, Procanico, Ansonica |
| Cellar | No additives, no added sulfites; spontaneous fermentation; three-to-four-week maceration; wood maturation five to sixteen months |
| Certifications | Organic from 2010; SQNPI sustainable-quality from 2022 |
| First Bottle | La Maliosa Rosso (varietal Ciliegiolo, IGT Toscana) |
The Producer
Antonella Manuli spent ten years working in sustainability at Terme di Saturnia, a thermal resort complex in the southern Maremma. She fell in love with the landscape during that time, and in the mid-2000s conceived an agricultural project rooted in what she had learned there: that a farm could be run as an integrated system rather than a wine operation with a field attached. The estate she built, Fattoria La Maliosa, sits across two separate territories in Grosseto province. The Saturnia holding covers a 170-hectare landscape of vineyards, olive groves, arable land and forest on predominantly clay soils. The Pitigliano holding, roughly twenty kilometres southeast, adds three hectares of vines on volcanic ash and tuff.
Total vineyard area is 9.5 hectares. Oenologist Filippo Paoletti handles cellar work. The estate has been certified organic since 2010 and added SQNPI sustainable-quality certification in 2022.
Place
The southern Maremma is the least-visited part of Tuscany's wine map. Where the Chianti Classico zone and Bolgheri command most of the region's attention, the country around Saturnia and Pitigliano sits further south, closer to the Tyrrhenian coast and the border with Lazio. The landscape is wide and largely unirrigated, with thermal springs, tufa towns and a history of mixed farming rather than single-crop viticulture.
That mixed-farming past shapes La Maliosa directly. Ciliegiolo and Procanico are both local Tuscan varieties, not international grapes planted for market reasons. The IGT Toscana designation on the bottles reflects the estate's decision to work outside the Morellino di Scansano DOC zone, giving Manuli the freedom to use the varieties she recovered from the old vineyard without appellation-mandated grape percentages.
Soil And Site
The Saturnia parcels grow on clay-dominant soils, producing grapes with good body and a broad flavour frame. At Pitigliano, the geology shifts to volcanic ash deposited over a deep layer of tuff, which opens drainage, reduces vine vigour and produces wines with a more mineral thread.
Three parcels are worth naming for what they add. Vigna Madre, the original recovered vineyard, is the oldest planting on the estate, approximately sixty years old. Vigna Corino at Montecavallo is what the estate calls a heroic vineyard: a 30% slope on stony soil with a geological matrix approximately ten million years old. Manual work on that gradient is slow and selective by necessity. Vigna Formica at Pitigliano is one hectare planted to Procanico and white Cannonau over the volcanic-ash and tuff profile, supplying the fruit for the white wines from that territory.
Story
Manuli did not begin by planting new vines. She began by rescuing one that already existed. When she took on the Saturnia land, a sixty-year-old parcel had fallen into semi-abandonment. She recovered it, called it Vigna Madre, and found inside it something unexpected: a wide genetic repertoire of varieties, clones and biotypes that had survived together in mixed planting over decades. Rather than replace them with a cleaner, more commercially legible selection, she used Vigna Madre as a template. Every vineyard the estate planted between 2009 and 2023 was designed to replicate the varietal diversity that the old vines had preserved.
From 2013, Manuli worked with agronomist and researcher Lorenzo Corino to formalise the farming approach into what became Metodo Corino: dense vine populations, contour-line planting to limit erosion and ease manual work, no additive use in the cellar, and spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts. From 2014, all new rows followed the landscape's contour lines rather than running down the slope, reducing soil movement and continuing the terraced patterns historically associated with this part of Tuscany. Organic certification followed in 2010, SQNPI certification in 2022.
Vineyards And Cellar
The 9.5 hectares carry five principal varieties: Ciliegiolo and Sangiovese as the lead reds, grey Cannonau for a third red direction, Procanico and Ansonica in white. That variety selection reflects what Vigna Madre contained, not a planting decision made from current market preferences.
In the cellar, grapes are hand-harvested and fermented spontaneously with the yeasts carried in from the vineyard. Maceration runs for three to four weeks, which for a grape like Ciliegiolo means extracting colour and fruit over an extended window without pressing for additional tannin. Wines mature in wood for five to sixteen months. No additives enter the cellar at any stage, and no sulfites are added. The approach produces wines that retain a living quality after bottling, particularly visible in the Uni, which the producer describes as a wine that continues to change in the glass and over time.
Wines
La Maliosa Rosso is a varietal Ciliegiolo, labelled IGT Toscana. Ciliegiolo is a Tuscan red grape with a cherry-forward aromatic profile, lower tannin weight than Sangiovese and a natural freshness. The nose carries wild morello cherry, dried rose and Mediterranean scrub. On the palate, the tannins are soft, the acidity is vivid, and the finish is long. This is the estate's most documented and most accessible red.
La Maliosa Uni is an orange wine made from Procanico, a local Tuscan name for Trebbiano Toscano, grown on the Pitigliano volcanic parcels. Extended skin contact gives the wine its colour and a tannic grip that white Procanico would not have. Persistent floral and citrus aromas, bitter almond on the finish, a mineral thread running through the mid-palate. The producer is direct that the Uni changes after bottling and continues to develop in the glass.
Additional cuvées exist in the range but are not fully documented.
In The Glass
Across the range, the through-line is aromatic freshness over weight. Ciliegiolo in the Rosso gives a lifted cherry and rose opening, followed by a supple mid-palate with the soft grip that comes from the long maceration and the absence of added sulfites. The finish is clean and long. In the Uni, Procanico grown on volcanic ash carries a citrus and mineral character that cuts through the skin-contact amber tone. The bitter almond on the finish is a typical signal of extended maceration on white grapes and marks the wine as something different from skin-contact styles made for colour alone. Wood maturation across the range adds some breadth and integration, but the cellar method keeps the fruit clearly at the centre.
A Bottle To Understand It
La Maliosa Rosso is the first bottle. It is varietal Ciliegiolo, IGT Toscana, made without additives or added sulfites, fermented spontaneously and matured in wood after a three-to-four-week maceration. The nose is specific: wild morello cherry, dried rose, a scrubby herbal note that comes from Mediterranean macchia on the estate. The tannins are soft enough to drink without food pairing anxiety, the acidity is bright and present, and the finish is longer than the weight of the wine suggests it should be. It is the clearest single expression of what Manuli built: a Tuscan red from a local grape, farmed without chemistry, made without additives, and bottled with the character of its particular place.
Anecdote
When Manuli first turned her attention to the Saturnia land, one section of it was almost lost. A sixty-year-old vineyard had been left in semi-abandonment, its rows untended and its mixed plantings grown into each other. She could have pulled it out and started clean. Instead she walked it, studied what was growing there, and found that the old vines had been planted in the traditional Tuscan way: not one variety in rows but many varieties, clones and biotypes interplanted across the parcel, the way peasant farmers had always done it. She called it Vigna Madre. Every vineyard the estate planted over the following fourteen years, from 2009 through 2023, was designed to replicate what Vigna Madre had preserved. The variety list now across 9.5 hectares traces back to what one semi-abandoned field refused to forget.
Final Word
Fattoria La Maliosa is a southern Maremma estate that built its range from what the land already contained. Ciliegiolo and Procanico are Tuscan varieties grown here because they were in Vigna Madre, not because they were in demand. The no-additive, no-sulfite cellar approach is not a marketing position; it is the practical consequence of a farming philosophy codified with Lorenzo Corino over more than a decade. The wines are alive in the way that wines made this way tend to be: fresh, aromatic, specific to place, and honest about what they are.
Sources
- https://fattorialamaliosa.it/en/fattoria-la-maliosa/
- https://fattorialamaliosa.it/en/antonella-manuli/
- https://fattorialamaliosa.it/en/vineyards-and-natural-wines/
- https://wineguide.wein.plus/fattoria-la-maliosa
- https://www.oldvines.org/members/fattoria-la-maliosa-tuscany-italy
- https://shop.fattorialamaliosa.it/cat/igt-toscana-rosso/la-maliosa-rosso/
- https://shop.fattorialamaliosa.it/en/cat/white-wines/la-maliosa-uni/