The Lawyer, the Magazine Aromas & the Farm Asleep Since 1955
On the Colle Civita hill just south of Valentini's legendary estate, a city kid who bought his first bottle of wine at twelve — "to smell the aromas the journalists were writing about, not to drink" — left the law, revived a family farm that had not made wine since 1955, and taught himself to farm biodynamically and make wine with no enology degree and no consulting winemaker. Seventeen hectares of vines inside a 200-hectare living farm. No stainless steel. No selected yeasts. No filtration. Just one of the most quietly precise estates in Abruzzo.
Origin — 2007, the Second Love of His Life
Stefano De Fermo grew up a city kid with no family expectation of farming. He discovered wine not at a table but on the page — in the reviews of his mother's cooking magazines. At twelve years old, he bought his first bottle of wine, as he tells it, "to smell the aromas the journalists were writing about — not to drink." By his last year of high school he had taken three sommelier courses. But passion, in those days, was a hobby; the profession was the law. He became a lawyer — and in 2005 he married Eloisa De Fermo, herself a lawyer, from a land-owning family in the hills around Loreto Aprutino.
In 2007, the couple visited the family farm at Colle Civita, and Stefano found what he calls "the second love of my life." The farm was beautiful and abandoned — it had not produced wine since 1955. Stefano soon took it over, working alongside his day job, and about five years later he quit the law to become a full-time vigneron. He did it the hard way and the Abruzzese way: no enology training, no consulting winemaker — just sommelier-honed instincts, obsessive reading, and the vineyards themselves as teachers.
The family's farming philosophy turned back the clock before it was fashionable: biodynamic principles from 2008, with certification following a few years later — an organic, biodynamic estate in a region where, two generations earlier, the family had simply farmed that way because there was no alternative. The vineyards had been returned to pre-chemical methods, and the estate became, alongside its wines, a working archive of the old Abruzzese farm: olives, ancient grains, legumes, cows, and its own line of organic pasta.
He was not alone in those hills. Stefano found a friend, mentor and champion in Francesco Paolo Valentini, son of the great Edoardo, whose family estate lies just a few kilometres up the road. It was Francesco Paolo who tasted the first wines, encouraged him, advised him, and vouched for him to the world. "Francesco was my first sponsor," Stefano says. In a sense, the story of De Fermo is the story of what happened after Valentini — proof that the old master's silence left behind not an ending, but a beginning.
The Place — Colle Civita, the 1926 Chardonnay & the Living Farm
De Fermo's vineyards sit on the stony, steep slopes of Colle Civita, at 280–320 metres of altitude in the commune of Loreto Aprutino, just a few kilometres south of Valentini — among the best terroirs in all of Abruzzo. The vines grow on clay soils between the warm Adriatic Sea and the glacial peaks of the Gran Sasso and Majella, cooled by altitude and mountain air. But the estate is best understood as a whole: a 200-hectare farm of which only 17 hectares are vines — the rest olives, vegetables, legumes, herbs, pasture for cows, and ancient grains — because Stefano and Eloisa understand that biodiversity itself is a key ingredient in the quality of the wines.
The Vineyards — 17 Hectares, Only 6 Estate-Bottled
The 17 hectares of vines are planted overwhelmingly to the region's own varieties: 10 hectares of Montepulciano, 3.5 hectares of Pecorino — a variety Stefano particularly reveres and keeps planting more of — 2.5 hectares of Chardonnay, and just under one hectare of Trebbiano. From all of this, only six hectares are used for the estate's own wines; the rest of the fruit is sold to the local cooperative. Drastically low yields are a point of pride, and the vineyard work is in expert hands: since 2015, the vines have been managed by Paolo Ravano, the vineyard wizard who also tends the vines of Cappellano in Barolo and Le Boncie in Tuscany.
The 1926 Chardonnay — Italy's Oldest
Among the vines is a treasure nearly a century old: a plot of Chardonnay imported from France and planted in 1926 — some of Italy's oldest Chardonnay plantings — put in the ground by Eloisa's Burgundy-loving great-uncle. It survived decades of neglect on the family farm, a living relic from an era when Abruzzo's hill farmers were cosmopolitan enough to smuggle in the noblest white grape of France. From it comes the estate's barrel-fermented Chardonnay Launegild — a wine that tastes of both Burgundy and the Adriatic.
Cordon Royat, Not Pergola
Most of the area's vineyards are trained in the region's traditional pergola, with its generous canopies and generous yields. At De Fermo, the vines are planted overwhelmingly in cordon royat — a low, disciplined training system that severely limits potential yields but produces concentrated, expressive fruit. It is a quiet declaration of intent: in a region built on volume, Colle Civita is built on concentration. The density in the glass starts with the density on the vine.
Olives, Ancient Grains, Cows & Pasta
The farm encompasses 20 hectares of olive trees alongside the vines, plus vegetables, legumes, herbs, and grazing land for cows — and the family is very active in restoring and cultivating heirloom olives, wheats and grains, producing its own line of organic pastas from ancient varieties. In an age of monoculture estates, De Fermo is deliberately a farm in the old, whole sense: vines as one voice in a chorus of crops, each feeding the health of the others. This is what biodynamics looks like when it is a livelihood and an intellectual passion at once — not a certification, but a worldview.
Winemaking — The 18th-Century Cellar & the Absence of Stainless Steel
The wines are made in the stone cellar of an old farmhouse — an 18th-century cellar of cement vats and large wooden barrels. The vessel list is short and deliberate: Stockinger botti, Garbelotto tonneaux, and concrete — and, notably, no stainless steel anywhere in the cellar. Every vessel serves one purpose: textural harmony, providing a home for the wine without contributing aromas or flavours. It is sensitive, thoughtful low-interventionism — the kind that lets a wine locate expressive registers impossible with more strong-fisted methods.
Fermentations are always spontaneous — no selected yeasts, no enzymes — with no temperature control of any kind. The wines are never fined and never filtered, and sulphur is used very sparingly: usually a small addition before bottling, sometimes a touch at racking. Nothing is added that the vineyard did not already contain; nothing is taken away that time would not have taken itself.
The estate's most famous wine is named for its home: Concrete, a Montepulciano raised entirely in cement — the vessel not as a neutral container but as an active, micro-oxygenating partner in the wine's slow assembly. In a region where small French barrique became the default sign of "quality" in the 1990s, De Fermo's refusal of new oak and embrace of cement was both a provocation and a thesis: that Montepulciano's virtues are freshness, minerality and precision, and that wood — especially new wood — obscures them.
Stefano's own summary of his path doubles as his philosophy: "My path is a common one for artisan vignerons in Italy; we arrived in wine from other areas." The outsider's eye is the estate's great asset. Unburdened by regional habit — the pergola, the barrique, the consultant — a lawyer from the city could look at Colle Civita and see it clearly: a great site, farmed honestly, would make precise wines. The cellar's job was simply to stay out of the way.
The Wines — From the Cement-Dwelling Concrete to the 1926 Launegild
De Fermo's range is deliberately compact — six wines, all from the estate's own six hectares of selected vineyards, all spontaneously fermented, unfined, unfiltered and minimally sulphured. The cellar's capacity is about 30,000 bottles a year; current production runs at roughly half that, in keeping with the estate's small-holding philosophy. The wines now appear on the lists of prestigious venues such as New York's Del Posto — and in the glasses of those who followed the Valentini thread south to Colle Civita.
De Fermo "Prologo" Montepulciano d'Abruzzo
Red — Colle Civita, Loreto AprutinoThe estate's elegant flagship — a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo of uncommon mineral precision and complexity, raised in large neutral oak and concrete in the 18th-century cellar. Where so many Abruzzo reds chase power and jam, Prologo is structured but fresh, dark-fruited but stony — the calling card of a vineyard farmed at drastically low yields in cordon royat. It is the wine that made the estate's reputation on serious lists in New York and beyond. Wild yeast, no fining, no filtration, minimal sulphur.
De Fermo "Concrete" Montepulciano d'Abruzzo
Red — Colle Civita, Loreto AprutinoThe estate's manifesto in a bottle — a Montepulciano raised entirely in cement, with no oak of any kind. The tank itself gives the wine its name and its character: slow, silent micro-oxygenation rounding the tannins while the clay and stone of Colle Civita speak without wood's commentary. Juicier and more immediate than Prologo but with the same stony spine — dark cherry, blood orange, dried herbs and a firm, saline finish. A wine that answers the question every skeptic asks about natural Abruzzo reds: yes, it can be both pure and profound. Wild yeast, unfined, unfiltered, minimal sulphur.
De Fermo "Le Cince" Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo
Rosato — Colle Civita, Loreto AprutinoThe estate's Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo — the region's great traditional rosato of Montepulciano, here made with the same seriousness as the reds: spontaneous fermentation, gentle élevage in wood and concrete, no fining, no filtration. In a region that drinks Cerasuolo by the carafe, Le Cince treats it as wine first, rosé second — structure, savoriness and a stony grip that stands proudly beside the great pink wines of Italy. Minimal sulphur. Limited.
De Fermo "Don Carlino" Pecorino
White — Colle Civita, Loreto AprutinoFrom the 3.5 hectares of Pecorino — the variety Stefano particularly reveres and keeps planting more of — Don Carlino is the estate's purest expression of Colle Civita's white-wine potential. Farmed biodynamically, fermented wild, raised in the old stone cellar. Pecorino's natural gifts — high acidity, minerality, and an almost salty, savory depth — are exactly suited to these clay slopes between the Adriatic and the mountains. A white of tension and length, and a quiet argument that Pecorino deserves its seat among Italy's great indigenous varieties. Minimal sulphur. Unfiltered.
De Fermo "Launegild" Chardonnay
White — Colle Civita, Loreto AprutinoThe wine from the estate's living treasure — a plot of Chardonnay imported from France and planted in 1926 by Eloisa's Burgundy-loving great-uncle, among the oldest Chardonnay plantings in Italy. The grapes are barrel-fermented in the old stone cellar, yielding more than 300 cases of a wine that belongs entirely to neither Burgundy nor Abruzzo — part mountain freshness, part Mediterranean ripeness, part a century of vine memory. A barrel-fermented white of uncommon character, and the estate's most direct link to the farm's long, interrupted history — the vineyard that survived the fifty silent years. Wild ferment, minimal sulphur.
De Fermo "Concrete" Bianco
White — Colle Civita, Loreto AprutinoThe white companion to the estate's manifesto red — from the farm's small holdings of Trebbiano and other white varieties, given maceration on the skins and raised, as the name insists, entirely in concrete. It is De Fermo's most natural-wine-facing cuvée: amber-hued, tannic in the way only skin-contact whites are, deeply savoury, and yet still precise — the Colle Civita stoniness shining through the texture. For those who discovered De Fermo through the red Concrete, the Bianco completes the thought: same vessel, same philosophy, opposite colour. Wild yeast, unfined, unfiltered, minimal sulphur.
Legacy — The Next Chapter Written Just South of Valentini
De Fermo matters because it is the clearest answer to a question the wine world began asking when Edoardo Valentini died in 2006 and Gianni Masciarelli died in 2008: what comes next in Abruzzo? The answer, it turned out, was quietly taking shape a few kilometres south of Loreto Aprutino's old master — on a farm that had not made wine since 1955, in the hands of a lawyer with a sommelier's nose and no enology degree, farming biodynamically from 2008 and bottling less than half of what the cellar could hold.
The legacy is agricultural. In an era of monoculture wineries, De Fermo restored the whole-farm model: 17 hectares of vines inside a 200-hectare organism of olives, ancient grains, legumes, herbs and pasture — the biodiversity treated not as branding but as a key ingredient in the quality of the wines. Heirloom olive varieties are being brought back; forgotten wheats are milled into the family's own organic pasta. The estate is a working argument that the old Abruzzese mixed farm was not a relic but a technology — one that modern viticulture is only now relearning.
The legacy is oenological. The Concrete cuvée — Montepulciano raised entirely in cement, named for its vessel — helped reopen the region's most important stylistic question: what does this grape really taste like without oak? Alongside Prologo's precision, Le Cince's serious rosato, and the 1926 Launegild — a Chardonnay vineyard that survived the estate's fifty silent years — De Fermo has built a small range in which every wine is an argument about what Abruzzo can be.
And the legacy is lineal. With Paolo Ravano — the vineyard hand behind Cappellano and Le Boncie — tending the vines since 2015, and Francesco Paolo Valentini as first sponsor and continuing friend, De Fermo sits at the exact point where Abruzzo's past and present meet. The master of Loreto Aprutino kept his methods secret; the lawyer of Colle Civita, working the same hillsides with the same reverence, has shown a new generation how to begin. The farm that slept from 1955 to 2007 is, at last, fully awake.