The Pizzaiolo's Return: Partida Creus Said Go, So He Went Home to the Hills
An hour north-east of Naples, in the mountain village of Cerreto Sannita, the Gismondi family farmed grapes, olives and vegetables for generations and sold most of the fruit to the cooperative. Antonio left to run a pizzeria outside Barcelona — and there, a few hundred metres from Partida Creus, he befriended Massimo Marchiori and Antonella Gerosa, tasted them on his homemade natural wine, and was told to take it seriously. In 2019 he came home with his wife Anabel and their two daughters, took over the family vines, and began bottling the Sannio as it had never quite been bottled: nothing added, nothing taken away, wax-sealed bottles drawn with the silhouette of the village hills.
Origin — The Restaurant Door Swings Both Ways
The Gismondi family has always roamed the mountainous hillsides of Cerreto Sannita, a small village in the Benevento province an hour north-east of Naples. Antonio's parents, Maria and Pasquale, farmed grapes, olives and vegetables, sold most of the fruit to the local cooperative, and made a little wine for the family table — the standard smallholder arrangement across the Sannio.
Antonio went the other way: abroad, into restaurants. Far from Italy he ran a pizzeria in the Catalan village of Bonastre — a few hundred metres from the Partida Creus winery, and naturally he became friends with Massimo Marchiori and Antonella Gerosa, the Italian couple behind one of natural wine's most beloved estates. When Massimo and Antonella visited the Gismondi family in 2016, they tasted what Antonio was making on the side and saw the potential immediately. A first public showing at Cologne's Wein Naturel fair in 2017 confirmed it: the family would stop selling grapes and start bottling.
Pasquale and Maria retired in 2018; in 2019 Antonio, Anabel and their two daughters moved back to Benevento — after a spell in Zurich — and La Vinicola di Antonio Gismondi was established with the 2019 harvest. The pizzaiolo had come home, but he brought the restaurant world's nose with him: wines for the table, saline and weightless, made for drinking rather than for points.
The Place — A Mountain Microclimate in the Hot South
Cerreto Sannita lies just 60 kilometres from the Tyrrhenian coast, but the climate reads continental: humid easterly winds off the sea collide with the southern Apennines, bringing cool temperatures, frequent rain, fog and night frost in winter. The vineyards sit at 350–380 metres — with the highest Malvasia di Candia site up at 700 — on stony clay over volcanic bedrock. The whites, Falanghina and the local Malvasia di Candia, were planted some thirty years ago on south-western slopes; the reds, Sangiovese, Merlot, Freisa and Camiola, are younger. The result is freshness over power: the antithesis of the big, structured style the region is known for.
Always Organic
The land has only ever been farmed organically — no synthetic chemicals, ever — with peasant practices that resembled biodynamics before the family knew the word. As one importer put it: the common sense of the ancients, followed in spite of fashion.
Cerreto, the Local Malvasia
Malvasia di Candia is so rooted here that it answers to the village's own name: 'Cerreto'. From the highest site — rocky limestone and clay at 700 metres above a volcanic bedrock — Antonio makes a skin-fermented white of hazy pale gold, discreet tannins and salty grapefruit pith. A grape as a place name.
Six Wines, Mostly White
The range runs to about six wines, mainly white: breezy, weightless, lilting with yellow citrus and floral aromas over a saline imprint. The one red, Crucella, is a bright-fruited but structured cherry bomb — a world away from the heavier Aglianico-based wines of the region.
Friends' Grapes, Same Rules
Beyond the home hectares, Antonio works with friends who grow a little of the pink-skinned Trebbiano Rosa — the natural wine economy as it actually functions in the Sannio: neighbours, handshake standards, and fruit you can vouch for because you walk the rows yourself.
Winemaking — Grapes and Only Grapes
The cellar philosophy is stated in one breath: wines made as naturally as possible, without any inputs, aged in stainless steel. Grapes are hand-harvested; fermentations are spontaneous; the whites see skin contact in open-topped tanks — nine days for the Cerreto — before pressing off to steel to rest until a spring bottling. No additions, no corrections, no fining, no filtration.
It is a strictness learned from Catalonia as much as from home. Antonio's self-description is 'grapes and only grapes' — the strict philosophy he brought back from the natural wine community around Partida Creus and applied to fruit his family had grown for generations without ever thinking to bottle it this way.
What emerges is delicacy where the region trades in muscle: tart white peach, zesty citrus pith, an earthy smokiness, tense cleansing acids with a thoroughly volcanic feel. The waxed capsules and hand-drawn labels finish the statement — every bottle dressed, quite literally, in the landscape it came from.
The Wines — Weightless Whites & One Cherry Bomb
Around six wines, mostly white, all zero-input: the high-altitude skin-contact Cerreto, Falanghina as the village never bottled it, and Crucella, the lone red — every bottle wax-sealed under the silhouette of the Cerreto hills.
Cerreto
Malvasia di Candia — skin-fermented whiteNamed for the village's own word for its grape: Malvasia di Candia from the highest site — 700 metres, rocky limestone and clay over volcanic bedrock — given a nine-day skin fermentation in open-topped tanks, then pressed to steel to rest until spring. Hazy pale gold, discreet tannins, yellow citrus and salty grapefruit pith over an earthy smokiness. The estate's calling card.
Falanghina
Sannio's white, unadornedFalanghina from thirty-year-old vines on the south-western slopes, hand-harvested, wild-fermented and raised in steel. Where the DOC versions chase polish, this one keeps the texture: saline, mineral, aromatic — the grape as the Gismondi family always drank it, finally in bottle.
Crucella
Sangiovese, Merlot & Freisa — redThe only red in the range and a statement of intent: not Aglianico, but the Sangiovese, Merlot and Freisa the family planted on the southern slopes. Bright-fruited but structured — a cherry bomb, in one importer's phrase — and proof that these hills can do freshness in red as well as white.
Trebbiano Rosa & Experiments
Pink-skinned rarities — rotating bottlingsFrom friends' vines at lower altitude, the pink-skinned Trebbiano Rosa joins the range in small, shifting bottlings — the experimental edge of an estate that releases what the year and the neighbours give it, wax-sealed and gone by word of mouth.
Legacy — The Village, Bottled Under Its Own Skyline
Gismondi's first legacy is a model of return that the Sannio desperately needs. This is depopulating Apennine country, where the default biography is departure. Antonio left, learned, and came back — not to a startup vineyard but to his parents' rows, his village's co-op fruit, his family's table wine, reimagined. Every waxed bottle argues that the next generation of the Sannio can come home and make something the world wants.
The second is the vindication of Malvasia di Candia and the other half-forgotten varieties of these hills. While the region's reputation runs on Aglianico and Falanghina, Gismondi bottles the village's namesake grape from 700 metres and lets it speak — saline, weightless, volcanic. A local variety as a flagship, not a curiosity.
The third is proof of the network: that a friendship formed over pizza in Catalonia could reach into the Benevento Apennines and change what a family did with its harvest. Natural wine's great invisible infrastructure — importers, fairs, friendships — found Cerreto Sannita, and Cerreto Sannita turned out to be ready.