The Matriarchy: A Family Reopened, Four Daughters Continued & the Centenary Vines They Tend Between Wine and Oil
In the heart of Saracena's Arab-named historic center — the same hill town where the Viola family was saving the Moscato Passito — another family quietly rebuilt its own wine story. Wine and oil, the Maradeis say, have always been the family's greatest passion. After a pause of several years, the estate was reopened in the 1980s by Vittorio Maradei and his wife, in the name of quality from the first day: organic from the restart, biodynamic since 2014 under the guidance of Michele Lorenzetti. Today the work is carried by their four daughters, with winemaker Gina Bavasso in the cellar. Three hectares of vines at 450 metres on calcareous clay — including centenary vineyards of Magliocco Dolce and Guarnaccia — plus fifteen hectares of olive groves and some three thousand trees, all organic. Natural wines, some in amphora, alongside the famous Moscato Passito di Saracena. Asked to explain their philosophy, the family declines the lecture: "We prefer that our products speak for us, with their taste they will tell you about our work and our love for this land."
Origin — Wine and Oil, Always
"Wine and oil have always been my family's biggest passion," the family writes on its own site — in a voice unmistakably the mother's, speaking of "my and my husband's will." The Maradei story is not a founding but a reopening: after a break of several years, the family company was restarted in the 1980s by Vittorio Maradei and his wife, and today the work continues thanks to their four daughters. The restart's premise was simple and absolute: aware that the new beginning should happen in the name of quality, they began with organic cultivation from the very first vintage.
The place is the old family cellar in the heart of Saracena's Arab historical center — the ancient village between the Pollino National Park and the land of Sybaris, the same town where Luigi Viola was simultaneously rescuing the Moscato di Saracena. Two families, one village, the same endangered heritage: while the Violas taught the passito recipe back to life, the Maradeis rebuilt a mixed family estate around it — vines, olive groves, natural wine, and the famous Moscato Passito di Saracena itself. The village's revival, it turns out, was never a solo act.
In 2014 the family took the next step, converting to biodynamic farming under the guidance of Michele Lorenzetti — the Steinerian preparations, the cosmic calendar, the whole anthroposophical apparatus. Asked to elaborate, the family demurs with the most quotable modesty in this series: "We could write here about Steiner, about anthroposophy or about preparations and much more — but we prefer that our products speak for us, with their taste they will tell you about our work and our love for this land." In an era of certification theater, it is a refusal that reads as confidence.
The Place — Between the Pollino and Sybaris
The Maradei vineyards lie between the ancient villages of Saracena, Firmo and Lungro, in the corridor between the Pollino National Park and the plain of Sybaris — a territory the family calls "full of traditions and contradictions, with its culture and its uncontaminated nature", best expressed in olive trees and vines. Three hectares of vineyard at 450 metres on calcareous clays of medium texture with a compact skeleton, farmed biodynamically and harvested by hand — alongside fifteen hectares of olive groves embracing some 3,000 trees of Cassanese, Roggianolella, Carolea, Frantoio, Nocellara Messinese and Foresana, treated with non-invasive procedures: no direct treatment on the plant, soft pruning, targeted work on the ground, harvest by electric olive harvesters, cold two-phase pressing. Wine and oil, always.
The Centenary Vines
Among the three hectares stand vines over a hundred years old — the source of the estate's two identity wines: Magliocco Dolce from the centenary vineyard, macerated two to three weeks (in some bottlings up to three months) and matured in 225–300-litre oak; and Guarnaccia Bianca, equally ancient, fermented as free-run must and raised in steel. The native register is deliberately complete: Guarnaccia Bianca, Malvasia Bianca and Nera, Magliocco Dolce, and the Moscatello di Saracena itself — every grape the village is famous for, in one family's keeping.
Biodynamic, Since 2014
The agronomic path has been limpid: first organic certification, then — from 2014 — biodynamic conversion under Michele Lorenzetti. But the family refuses the sermon. Their farming is observational rather than dogmatic: healthy vines on calcareous clay at altitude, worked by hand, harvested manually, with spontaneous fermentations of the free-run must in steel, no temperature control — the practical, taste-first side of the biodynamic instinct.
Amphora and Oak, Steel and Clay
The cellar keeps four vessel philosophies in play: steel for the fresh and aromatic whites; large oak (225–300 L) for the macerated reds; and terracotta amphora for the experiments — Danfora, a skin-macerated Malvasia–Guarnaccia, and Marinù, an amphora rosato of Magliocco Dolce with just hours of skin contact. A small cellar, in other words, conducting the same vessel conversation as the great estates of the Mediterranean — talha, palmenti, cement, amphora — at Saracena scale.
Vignaioli dell'Alta Calabria
The estate's own bio reads simply: "Natural wines and organic extra-virgin olive oil — Vignaioli dell'alta Calabria." High Calabria: the Pollino corridor where Saracena, San Marco Argentano, Donnici and the Cirò hills together form the region's artisanal spine. SevenFifty's 2021 survey of Calabria's renaissance names Vittorio Maradei alongside Dino Briglio and Eugenio Muzzillo among the Cosenza wave championed by small importers and Raw Wine — Saracena's other family, quietly in the vanguard.
Winemaking — Letting the Products Speak
The cellar protocol is natural wine in its purest Calabrian form: manual harvest; destemming in the press; spontaneous fermentation of the free-run must in stainless steel, with no temperature control; macerations that range from a few hours (the rosato) to two–three weeks or even three months (the centenary-vine reds); and maturation matched to each wine — steel for fragrance, 225–300-litre oak for structure, terracotta amphora for the experiments. Everything is certified organic; the biodynamic preparations steer the farming, not the fermentations.
The family makes seven wines in total — three white, two red, one rosé — plus the famous Moscato Passito di Saracena: the village's signature carried alongside the family's own range, as if to say the rescue belongs to no single house. And in the labels, watercolor illustrations of jellyfish and amphorae, hats and halved citrus — a visual whimsy that softens the rigor: biodynamic farming, natural ferments and old vines, delivered with a light hand.
What defines the estate's philosophy, finally, is its silence about philosophy. Where the series has met scholars who publish and mentors who teach, the Maradei family declines to lecture about Steiner, anthroposophy or the preparations — preferring, in their own words, that the products speak. It is the matriarchal temperament as winemaking style: care as the argument; taste as the text; the land as the only authority worth quoting.
The Wines — Seven Labels and a Passito
A complete native range from three hectares — three whites, two reds, one rosé, plus the Moscato Passito di Saracena — spanning steel, oak and amphora, every wine spontaneously fermented and organically farmed.
Dramis
100% Magliocco Dolce — from the centenary vineyardThe estate's flagship red, from vines over a century old on calcareous clay at 450 metres: maceration on the skins two to three weeks — in the most committed bottlings, up to three months — spontaneous fermentation in stainless steel with no temperature control, then twelve months in 225–300-litre oak. Structured, savory, old-vine Magliocco in the Saracena register — the centenary vineyard as the estate's crown and the wine that most fully states the family's case for high Calabria.
Dramis Bianco
100% Guarnaccia Bianca — from the centenary vineyardThe white twin of the flagship, from centenary Guarnaccia Bianca: destemmed and pressed, spontaneous fermentation of the free-run must only, raised entirely in stainless steel. Aromatic, saline, structured — the old-vine white register of the Pollino corridor, and proof the centenary argument holds in both colors. The bottle natural-wine buyers discover when they come for Dramis red and stay for the range.
Danfora
Malvasia Bianca & Guarnaccia Bianca — skin contact, amphoraThe amphora experiment in orange: Malvasia and Guarnaccia macerated on their skins for two to three days, spontaneously fermented and matured entirely in terracotta amphora. Tannic grip and perfume without a whisper of wood — the vessel conversation of the Mediterranean continued at Saracena scale. The label's watercolor jellyfish drifts over the amphora like a slow thought: clay, skins, time.
Cumìss
Magliocco Dolce & Malvasia NeraThe estate's blended red — Magliocco Dolce with Malvasia Nera: two to three days of maceration, spontaneous fermentation, maturation in 225–300-litre oak. Softer and more aromatic than Dramis, its dark Malvasia current running under the Magliocco structure — the family wine of the range, built for the village table. Cumìss in the Calabrian dialect reads like the family itself: convivial, a little mischievous, firmly of here.
Marinù
100% Magliocco Dolce — rosato, amphoraThe rosato, fermented and matured in amphora after only a few hours of skin contact in the press — Magliocco Dolce's fragrant, pale-pink register carried on clay. Alongside it, Aglò, the fresh white of Guarnaccia (70%) and Malvasia Bianca (30%), free-run must in steel — and above all of them, the Moscato Passito di Saracena, the village's 500-year treasure, made here alongside the family's own range. Seven labels and a passito: the complete Saracena library, under one family roof.
Legacy — Care as the Argument
Azienda Agricola Maradei's first legacy is the second half of Saracena's revival. Where Cantine Viola resurrected the Moscato Passito's recipe, the Maradeis rebuilt a complete working estate around it: centenary Magliocco and Guarnaccia vines, amphora and oak, natural ferments, biodynamic farming, olive oil from 3,000 trees — and they made the village's signature passito themselves, so the rescue would never depend on a single roof. A culture survives its second century when its keepers multiply; in Saracena, they did.
The second legacy is generational and gendered: an estate co-reopened by husband and wife, now carried by four daughters, with a woman winemaker in Gina Bavasso. In a region whose wine story was long told in men's names — the Cirò Boys, the schoolmaster, the professors — the Maradei continuity runs differently: quiet, familial, matriarchal, uninterested in manifestos. The refusal to lecture about Steiner is of a piece with it: care, not doctrine, is the argument.
The third legacy is stewardship of the old vines themselves. A centenary vineyard of Magliocco Dolce and one of Guarnaccia Bianca, hand-harvested at 450 metres on calcareous clay, farmed biodynamically and fermented naturally — living archives that most regions would have grubbed up for convenience decades ago. The family's wines are, in the end, transcripts: three months of maceration as punctuation; amphora as handwriting; taste as the only text they ask you to read.
That is the lesson of Azienda Agricola Maradei for this series: the custodians held the line; the schoolmasters taught the memory; the matriarchies kept the home. Revolutions need their loud voices, their teachers, their scholars — and they need, just as much, the family that simply stays: reopening, replanting, harvesting, pressing oil, raising daughters who will do it next. In Saracena, between the Pollino and the land of Sybaris, that family is named Maradei. The products speak. The land answers.