The Troubadour: A Singer Joins the Wine Quartet & the Estate That Chose Rebirth as Its Name
Every winery in this series has a name with a story; few have one with a chorus. Le Quattro Volte — "The Four Times," for the ancient belief that the soul passes through four turns of existence — is a friendship first and a farm second: winemaker Daniela De Marco and agronomist Giampiero Ventura, who once bottled their Calabrian natural wines under the name Masseria Perugini; Emilio Di Cianni, one of the three childhood friends who founded L'Acino in 2006; and Dario Brunori — Brunori Sas, one of Italy's most beloved singer-songwriters — whose lyric gave the estate its name and whose presence gives it its pulse. Between the Sila and Pollino national parks, at 200–400 metres on clayey-calcareous hills with constant mountain ventilation, the four grow the natives of Cosenza — Mantonico, Magliocco Canino, Malvasia Bianca, Guarnaccino, Greco — organically, with sheep grazing the rows, harvesting by hand and fermenting spontaneously, sulfur only when needed and always below 30 mg/L. They make wine, olive oil and a vegetable garden, and they host anyone who wants to sleep among the vines. "Following the rhythm of the seasons more than our agendas" is the whole philosophy — and the lyric is the whole ambition: you can be born again, if you feel like it.
Origin — The Rebirth
The estate's own site states it without ornament: Le Quattro Volte is a società agricola born of the friendship between Daniela De Marco, Giampiero Ventura, Dario Brunori and Emilio Di Cianni — "a project that is first of all a bond between people, and then a farm." But the deeper story is written in the name. The quartet's wines were, not long ago, bottled as Masseria Perugini — the farm-restaurant outside San Marco Argentano that for years served as a crossroads of the Cosenza natural wave. When the partnership reshuffled, the wine changed its name to fit, and Dario Brunori supplied the new one from his own songbook: "Le quattro volte" — a phrase that also echoes Michelangelo Frammartino's transcendent 2010 film, shot in Calabria, about a goatherd, a tree and charcoal, and the wheel of lives turning through the seasons.
Brunori's lyric is the estate's founding document: "The days will pass, the years will pass, and we will raise our glasses again for two hundred New Years. You can be born again — and then, be born again one more time, if you feel like it." Raisin's tasting note for the house reads, simply, "The taste of rebirth." The partners read it as an operating manual: the small Calabrian cellar transforms, while leaving the philosophy, tradition and taste of the wines unchanged — the dance of the seasons, the cycles of the vineyard, respect for time, for the silences and pauses of nature — joined now to the poetic and musical vision of the Cosentino singer-songwriter.
The continuity inside the change is a who's-who of this series. Daniela De Marco is the winemaker; Giampiero Ventura, her longtime partner in the Masseria Perugini years, tends the agronomy; Emilio Di Cianni — the L'Acino co-founder who, as this series recorded, "amicably moved on" from that estate — completes the farming braintrust; and Dario Brunori brings what no agronomist can: a chorus. Where the other estates of Cosenza argue their cases in prose, Le Quattro Volte argues in song.
The Place — Between Two National Parks
The farm lives between the Sila National Park and the Pollino National Park, in a hilly band at 200 to 400 metres above sea level — clayey-calcareous soils under constant microventilation from the mountains, an ever-present breeze the estate calls essential to the quality of its grapes. The land is alive and rich in biodiversity: sheep graze and fertilize between the rows, tomatoes and basil grow beside the vines ("tra un filare di pomodori e una piantina di basilico, coltiviamo…" — between a row of tomatoes and a basil plant, we grow…), and an olive grove of Roggianella and Carolea supplies the extra-virgin oil that comes at the end of each harvest.
Native Grapes, Naturally Grown
The vines are typical of the area: Mantonico, Magliocco, Malvasia Bianca, Guarnaccino and Greco, grown without any chemical products, pesticides or herbicides — organic as the only route worth taking, to enhance the territory and to educate the final consumer toward awareness and respect. The harvest is strictly manual, to honor the fruit from plant to glass, and the estate is a member of Vinnatur, the association of artisan natural winemakers.
The Farm Beyond the Vines
Wine, oil and vegetable garden: the estate's three verbs. The orto is farmed with natural agriculture and minimal intervention — "it works better when you let the land work," they say. In the herb beds between the crops they intervene as little as possible. The rhythm is the point: "seguiamo il ritmo delle stagioni più che le nostre agende" — we follow the rhythm of the seasons more than our agendas. The sheep do the mowing; the seasons do the scheduling; the partners do the rest.
Fresh and Youthful Methods
The production methods are described as fresh and youthful — spontaneous fermentation, sulfur only when needed and always below 30 mg/L, short élevage periods intended to highlight the pure, varietal character of the grapes. Where the Cirò estates argue for years in cement, the Quattro Volte wines argue for drinkability: skin macerations of weeks rather than months, lees rather than oak, fragrance over architecture.
Hospitality as Rebirth
You can sleep among the vineyards, taste in the cellar and live the territory up close — tastings and stays are part of the estate's fabric, not an add-on. The four partners host the way they make wine: unhurried, personal, seasonal. "The days will pass, the years will pass, and we will raise our glasses again for two hundred New Years." Hospitality is the lyric, enacted.
Winemaking — Following the Seasons, Not the Agendas
The cellar protocol is the Cosenza natural canon, executed with a light hand: manual harvest; destemming; macerations that run from a few hours (the rosato) to sixty days (the flagship orange Bifaro); fermentation with indigenous yeasts only, in concrete vats, with no temperature control and no clarification aids — the must clarifies itself by static gravity; ageing on the fine lees in the same vessels; unfined, unfiltered, no added sulfur in the top cuvées and always below 30 mg/L elsewhere. Vessels of choice: cement and steel — the fragrance-preserving pair that this series has met in Donnici and Cirò Marina.
What distinguishes the house is calibration. Vivavì Bianco, pure Mantonico from the highest hills around 300 metres, spends a month on its skins in cement and emerges at just 12% alcohol — golden with orange glints, peach and mirabelle, orange and hay, honey and Mediterranean scrub, a soft succulent palate closing on a mineral, faintly smoky finish. The winemaking philosophy says the label, is simply "Naturale." The methods, fresh and youthful, are aimed at one thing: the pure varietal character of grapes that until recently nobody bottled at all.
And the philosophy has a soundtrack. The dance of the seasons, the cycles of the vineyard, respect for time, for the silences and pauses of nature are one with the poetic and musical vision of the Cosentino singer-songwriter — the estate's own words. The troubadour's contribution is not celebrity garnish: it is the articulation of a feeling the other estates share but cannot always name — that wine is a way of agreeing to keep going, glass by glass, year after year. "Si può rinascere, si può rinascere ancora se ti va."
The Wines — Four Names, One Chorus
The core range — Vivavì, Bifaro, Manca del Rosso and Pimi — plus passiti and a vermouth made in the house's fresh, youthful register: native grapes, spontaneous ferments, fragrance first.
Vivavì
Bianco: 100% Mantonico • Rosso: 100% Magliocco Canino — Calabria IGTThe house pair in two colors. Bianco: pure Mantonico from the highest hills at about 300 metres, a month of skin contact in cement, 12% alcohol, unfined and unfiltered — golden with orange glints, peach and mirabelle, orange and hay, a soft succulent palate with a mineral, faintly smoky finish; some 5,000 bottles. Rosso: Magliocco Canino, the "super indigenous grape," aged in steel at 14% — dark berries and wild herbs, more lively than the famous varieties. The two wines that carried the Masseria Perugini name now carry the new one — the continuity, deliberately, intact.
Bifaro
80% Malvasia, 20% Mantonico — Calabria IGTThe longest maceration in the cellar — sixty days on the skins — followed by soft pressing; the must clarifies itself by static gravity in concrete vats, ferments with indigenous yeasts alone, no temperature control, then rests five months on the fine lees. Unfined, unfiltered, no added sulfur. The estate calls it plainly: "Il Bifaro is sun, sea and Mediterranean scrub — it speaks of its land, scent of citrus and wild herbs, salty to the right point, soft and fresh in the drink; floral sensations and golden apples lead to a soft yeasty roundness and a lingering finish marked by good supporting acidity." From organically farmed, sheep-grazed vineyards — the farm in a glass.
Manca del Rosso
100% Magliocco — Calabria IGT RosatoThe rosato, made with brief skin contact on Magliocco grapes — "a refreshing summer rosé with fruity and marine notes" in the importers' shorthand, and a small linguistic wink in the name (manca: it lacks; del rosso: the red — the little wine that is missing its color, on purpose). The bottle for the terrace, the beach, the end of the harvest lunch — the one that disappears first when the weather turns warm.
Pimi & The Rest of the Table
Pimi — plus passiti, a vermouth and the estate's olive oilPimi completes the quartet of wines that defined the house in its first life, made in the same fresh, youthful register. Around it, the estate fills out its own table: passiti, a vermouth, and the extra-virgin olive oil from Roggianella and Carolea — "versatile, to be used every day" — pressed at the end of the grape harvest. Wine, oil and garden, in the rhythm of the seasons: the whole chorus, not just the single.
Legacy — Toasting Two Hundred New Years
Le Quattro Volte's first legacy is narrative — it gave the Cosenza natural wave its most retold story. A beloved singer-songwriter joining a winemaking quartet is the kind of news that carries an entire region's artisanal wine to audiences that would never open a trade article. Brunori's audience met Mantonico because his lyric named the estate; the estate met the world because his chorus travels. In a movement that argues its case in cellars and consortium meetings, the troubadour argues it in stadiums and playlists.
The second legacy is the reunification itself. Di Cianni, who amicably left L'Acino; Ventura, who carried Masseria Perugini; De Marco, who kept the cellar craft through the rebrand — the new estate gathered threads from two earlier projects and wove them, without denial, into something new. The name says the philosophy: endings are turns, not stops. For a region whose wine identity spent decades being written by others, an estate that writes its own rebirth is a small act of sovereignty.
The third legacy is the farm as a whole life. Sheep in the rows, tomatoes beside the vines, basil at the end of the row, oil after the harvest, beds among the vines for those who want to stay — Le Quattro Volte practices the agrarian completeness the other estates describe, and practices it seasonally, publicly, with the windows open. The vegetable garden's rule — it works better when you let the land work — is as close as this series has come to a complete winemaking philosophy in one sentence.
That is the lesson of Le Quattro Volte for this series: the custodians held the line; the troubadours made the line sing. Wine is agriculture, chemistry, memory, teaching, scholarship — and it is also, irreducibly, a chorus: "The days will pass, the years will pass, and we will raise our glasses again for two hundred New Years." The Cosenza wave will keep turning, as waves do. This estate simply gave the turning a name, a melody and a place to sleep among the vines. Si può rinascere — you can be born again. If you feel like it.