The Amphora Revivalists: An Agronomist, an Archaeologist & the Volcano's Clay
At the foot of the extinct Roccamonfina volcano, in the northern corner of Caserta the Romans called Campania Felix, a historic masseria in the Iannaccone family since the late eighteenth century has become one of Italy's most coherent biodynamic estates. Diana Iannaccone, an agronomist, and Mario Basco, a former archaeologist turned winemaker, farm eleven hectares of vines within a living farm of hazelnuts, olives and vegetable plots, ringed by fifty hectares of wild woodland — and age their wines in terracotta amphorae, the ancestral vessel of this land. Fiano macerated into the amber Zagreo, Piedirosso as Lucno, the rescued Pallagrello Nero as Sphaeranera: the volcano speaking through clay, as it did before the Lombards banned the pots.
Origin — The Masseria That Waited
The name Cacciagalli belongs to the land before it belonged to the wine: a historic masseria present on these fields since the end of the eighteenth century, held by the Iannaccone family for generations. The soil, left largely unfarmed for years, turned out to be extraordinarily clean — the perfect blank page for a project built on respect for soil and natural cycles.
The project has two authors with two complementary trades. Diana Iannaccone is an agronomist who chose non-invasive cultivation to honour her family's land; Mario Basco is a former archaeologist and passionate connoisseur — a man as interested in a wine's story, in the people and places it recalls, as in its aroma. What unites them, as they say, is not only love for each other but love for their land: less a business than a life's journey, lived among the vines and fields where life actually happens.
Here, biodynamics is not a marketing choice but a working agriculture. The estate — some forty hectares of farmland with eleven of vines, the rest in hazelnut groves, olive trees and seasonal crops, plus fifty hectares of unfarmed woodland surrounding the farmhouse — is run to protect biodiversity and natural balance. I Cacciagalli is also a wine resort: a restored rural hamlet with kitchen and rooms, where the wines are poured steps from the rows that grew them.
The Place — The Sleeping Volcano
Roccamonfina is an extinct volcano, and everything at I Cacciagalli grows in its shadow: volcanic soils of limey clay with good organic matter, vineyards at around 200 metres where air currents from the inner Apennines meet those arriving from the sea — a climatic equilibrium that gives the wines freshness, tension and aromatic expressiveness. Guyot-trained vines at 4,400 plants per hectare give modest yields of 40–50 quintals. Around the vines: hazelnuts, olives (for the estate's own EVO oil), vegetables — and the deep silence of fifty hectares of untouched wood.
Volcanic, But Gentle
Unlike Etna's drama, Roccamonfina's volcanism is soft with age: friable dark soils, mineral depth, potassium-rich ash weathered into clay. It gives structure without brutality — the reason Fiano and Piedirosso here keep freshness even in warm years.
Pallagrello Nero, Rescued
Diana recovered Pallagrello Nero — once among the most widespread varieties of the area — in the family lands, and bottles it as Sphaeranera, amphora-aged with long maceration. One of Campania's great near-lost grapes, back in production because an agronomist went looking in her own fields.
A Farm That Feeds Its Guests
The estate's EVO oil blends local natives Sessana and Tenacella with Itrana, Frantoio and Leccino; the kitchen works with the farm's hazelnuts, vegetables and the Slow Food presidium chickpea of Teano. Wine here is one verse of a whole-farm poem.
Biodiversity as Method
Eleven hectares of vines inside a ninety-hectare living landscape is a ratio, not a statistic. Forest, grove, field and vine exchange insects, birds and microbes; the vineyard's resilience is quite literally grown around it.
Winemaking — Clay, the Patient Vessel
The cellar's signature is terracotta amphora, chosen after vintages of trial against steel and wood. Mario's verdict: amphora gives less tannic, more relaxed wines — the clay breathes, the juice can stay longer on the skins drawing out complexity, and there is no reduction. Fermentations run on indigenous yeasts; sulphur is used sparingly; the wines are bottled without fining or filtration.
The flagship whites are skin-contact by design: Zagreo, the estate's emblematic Fiano, macerated long in amphora into an amber wine of empireumatic perfume and explosive acidity; reds like Lucno (Piedirosso) macerate about twenty days in clay and emerge ruby, fine-tannic and savoury. The harvest is manual, in the first ten days of October for the reds.
Nothing here is fashion-chasing, though the world caught up: when an orange-wine column featured Zagreo back in 2016, its author noted the couple were doing amphora, minimal intervention and extended skin contact before all three were trends — one taste banished any thought of bandwagon-jumping. These are people who know exactly what they are doing.
The Wines — The Volcano, in Clay
Native varieties, indigenous yeasts, amphora ageing, no fining or filtration: Zagreo's amber Fiano, Aorivola's Falanghina, Lucno's Piedirosso, Sphaeranera's rescued Pallagrello Nero — the Roccamonfina IGT stated in terracotta.
Zagreo
Fiano, macerated — Roccamonfina IGTThe wine that made the name: Fiano macerated long on its skins and aged in amphora — amber, empireumatic, an explosion of flavour carried on a shaft of acidity. The bottle that put Teano on the natural wine map, and the one that ages for years without losing its nerve.
Sphaeranera
Pallagrello Nero — Roccamonfina IGTThe rescue mission in a bottle: Pallagrello Nero, once ubiquitous here and nearly lost, recovered by Diana in the family fields — pure, amphora-aged with long macerations. Dark, spicy, structured: a grape the Bourbons prized, back from the edge.
Lucno
Piedirosso — Roccamonfina IGTOne hundred percent Piedirosso, vinified and aged in amphora with about twenty days on the skins — ruby red, dark fruit and cherry with unusual notes of herbs, spice and toasted fennel seed; fine tannins, beautiful freshness, savoury finish. Unfiltered, unclarified, 13%.
Aorivola & the Whites
Falanghina & friends — Roccamonfina IGTThe estate's Falanghina and white companions carry the same house style: wild ferments, terracotta, texture over perfume-polish. Eleven listed wines orbit the core trio — each vintage another report from the sleeping volcano.
Legacy — Campania Felix, Kept
I Cacciagalli's first legacy is amphora itself. When the couple committed their flagship wines to clay, the vessel was still eccentric; within a decade it had become the natural wine world's symbol. Teano can fairly claim to be one of the places where that revival was earned rather than adopted — with an archaeologist's reasons, not a stylist's.
The second legacy is a living model of the integrated farm: vines, hazelnuts, olives, vegetables, woodland, kitchen and rooms, all one organism. In a region where wine often stands apart from agriculture, I Cacciagalli insists they are the same thing — and the wine resort makes the argument hospitality-sized, plate by plate.
The third is a variety saved. Pallagrello Nero's return to the bottle as Sphaeranera is the kind of quiet rescue that decides what Campania's wine map looks like in fifty years. The fortunate land the Romans named is still fortunate — because someone is keeping it that way.