The Garagiste of Guardia: A Garage Cellar, Two Native Grapes & His Grandparents' Method
Guardia Sanframondi, a hilltop town in the Sannio Beneventano famous across Italy for its wines, is where Giovanni Iannucci was born, left, and — in 2012 — came home to. He took over the two hectares of family vineyard his father Dante had harvested to sell to the cooperative, converted the garage into a small, tidy cellar, and began making wine exactly as his grandparents had: no chemistry in the field, no selected yeasts or enological products in the cellar, nothing filtered or fined, only the smallest dose of sulphur. Two native grapes — Falanghina and the Sannio's own Barbera — and a handful of thousand bottles a year, made to carry the marks of the seasons that bore them.
Origin — The Call of the Co-op Grapes
Giovanni Iannucci was born and raised in Guardia Sanframondi, a village on the hills of the Sannio Beneventano renowned across Italy for its wines. After a spell of city life, the pull of the land — and of the family's long passion for growing vines and sharing what they made — proved too strong. In 2012 he came home, took over the family's two hectares, and turned the garage into a cellar.
The memories that fuelled the decision were specific: helping his father Dante, a trade unionist, with the harvest and the sale of grapes to the local cooperative; and the photographs and stories of his grandparents fermenting a simple, macerated Falanghina in cement vats — people unaware that the wine world would soon split in two, between an indispensable need for naturalness and a dramatic reliance on synthetic products. Giovanni simply chose the grandparents' side of the fork.
He describes the return as both a relaunch and a homecoming: turning an inheritance into a trade, and making a young wine rich in the best teachings of the past. From the beginning he has farmed without chemical or toxic agents — green manure for fertiliser, copper and sulphur kept to a minimum, algae and propolis extracts to stimulate the vines' own defences. The estate is a member of VinNatur, the Italian natural wine association.
The Place — Between Guardia and Castelvenere
The vineyards are split between Guardia Sanframondi and Castelvenere, in the north-east of Campania on the border with Molise — parcels at 150 to 380 metres on predominantly clay-limestone and tufaceous soils. It is deep Sannio: rolling vineyard and olive country under the Taburno and Matese massifs, where smallholders historically grew grapes for the big conferring wineries. Giovanni works only the traditional local varieties — Falanghina, Barbera del Sannio and a little Trebbiano Toscano.
Barbera del Sannio — Not That Barbera
The Sannio's Barbera is genetically distinct from the famous Piedmontese grape of the same name: an ancient variety of the Benevento hills, medium-bodied, savoury, made for the table. Giovanni bottles it as Costa delle Viole — an act of varietal patriotism in a region where Aglianico gets the headlines.
Farming Without Toxins
No chemical fertilisers, no herbicides, no synthetic treatments; fertilisation by green manure (sovescio), copper and sulphur in contained quantities, and extracts of algae and propolis to help the vines stimulate their own defences. Organic method, peasant logic.
Two Grapes, Full Stop
The first and most important choice was concentration: only Falanghina and Barbera del Sannio. In a region of a hundred native varieties, betting the whole estate on two of them is a declaration — know your land, then say one thing well.
Wine for Vegetarians & Vegans
With no fining and no filtration, nothing animal-derived ever touches the wine — the estate's VinNatur listing certifies wines suitable for vegetarian and vegan diets. Purity of process as a side effect of purity of intent.
Winemaking — The Marks of the Seasons
In the garage cellar the rules are the grandparents', updated only in equipment: hand-harvested grapes, fermentation exclusively with native yeasts, brief skin maceration for the whites, no enological products, no temperature control, no fining, no filtration — and only minimal doses of sulphur where needed. Ageing vessels span cement's heirs: steel and wood, chosen per wine.
The philosophy is stated in one sentence: the wines must carry the marks of the seasons that bore them, and speak a unique language year after year — never domesticated. Uniformity is the enemy; vintage variation is the signature. It is the exact inversion of the cooperative logic the fruit once disappeared into.
The result, in the words of the specialists who stock him, is a set of fresh yet profound wines with a strong territorial imprint — expressive, structured, persistent. One Italian merchant called him one of the last, most pleasant, most exciting discoveries to emerge from the extraordinary natural wine scene of Campania, in the company of Podere Veneri Vecchio and Canlibero.
The Wines — Two Grapes, Four Seasons Each
A tight range built on the two chosen varieties — Falanghina in still white form, Barbera del Sannio in red — all native-fermented, unfined and unfiltered, with small shifting bottlings like Arcano and D'Altronde joining the core pair.
Campo di Mandrie
Falanghina — Beneventano IGPThe core white: Falanghina from the Guardia Sanframondi parcels, hand-harvested, wild-fermented with a brief maceration on the skins, bottled unfined and unfiltered. Fresh but profound — the Sannio's signature white carrying texture and place rather than polish.
Costa delle Viole
Barbera del Sannio — Beneventano IGPThe statement red: Barbera del Sannio, the ancient Beneventan variety unrelated to Piedmont's, fermented wild and bottled without fining or filtration. Savoury, medium-bodied, built for the table — a wine almost nobody else bottles in purity, which is precisely the point.
Arcano & D'Altronde
Small-lot bottlings — rotatingThe experimental edge: small cuvées that appear with the vintages — macerated whites and one-offs that let the garage follow its curiosity. Listed by the specialist shops that champion the estate, they are the hardest bottles to catch and the ones that show where the project is heading.
Legacy — The Proof That Staying Is a Revolution
Giovanni Iannucci's first legacy is demographic. The Sannio's hills are emptying; the inherited biography is departure. His 2012 return — city life traded for two hectares and a garage — is the small, repeatable act on which any rural renaissance depends. He did not buy an estate; he reclaimed one.
The second is varietal: Barbera del Sannio, bottled in purity and argued for in every market that will listen, alongside a Falanghina made the way his grandparents made it. In a region where a handful of famous grapes soak up the attention, keeping the minor natives visible is archival work done in the glass.
The third is associational: as a VinNatur member standing alongside Canlibero and the Sannio's other radicals, Iannucci has helped make the Beneventano — of all places — one of the densest natural wine territories in southern Italy. The cooperative's lost grapes, it turns out, were a movement in waiting.