The Week's Alliance: A Cilento Maverick, a London Sommelier & Seven Wines for Seven Days
In the summer of 2017, Bruno de Conciliis — the self-taught pioneer who had put Cilento wine on the world map in the 1990s — and Jack Lewens, the London sommelier and Michelin-starred restaurateur who had picked grapes with him since 2007, founded Vigneti Tardis: a range of fully natural, Mediterranean wines from the high hills of the Cilento. Organic and biodynamic vineyards on limestone, sandstone and clay, all within three kilometres of the sea; a solar-powered, off-grid winery; native grapes including the rescued Aglianicone; and seven wines named for the days of the week, because the portfolio is designed to give pleasure on any given day. No wine exceeds 500 cases; a third of London's natural-wine royalty holds a stake.
Origin — The Anarchist and the Sommelier
Bruno de Conciliis's biography reads like a novel. An arts-music-entertainment student in Bologna in the 1970s — where he connected with Umberto Eco in 1979 — drawn to anarchist politics; a return south after the 1980 earthquake; years on a biodynamic agricultural commune making single-variety honeys; then a suit and a company car as an animal-feed salesman, drinking his way through Italy's wine renaissance on the company card. 'I saw wine as an airplane ticket,' he says. 'Experiencing a good wine is like taking a trip to another land.'
In the mid-1990s he quit, put his severance into the family farm at Prignano Cilento, and with his siblings founded Viticoltori De Conciliis — planting Fiano and Aglianico in their father's north-facing clay-and-schist vineyard, converting an old cow barn into a winery, farming organically as a life choice. By the second vintage, 1997, Wine Spectator was rating the wines 'outstanding'. The mission, as Bruno puts it: to transform the Cilento from an oil-producing territory into one with great dignity as a wine producer.
Jack Lewens entered in 2007, doing his first harvest with Bruno — and coming back every year since. Lewens co-founded and co-owned Leroy in Shoreditch, Michelin-starred, one of London's defining natural-wine restaurants. In the summer of 2017 the friendship became a winery: Vigneti Tardis, with fellow travellers Ed Thaw, Michael Sager, Jackson Boxer and Stevie Parle also involved — London's natural wine scene, investing in a Cilento hillside.
The Place — Three Kilometres from the Sea
The vineyards lie in the Cilento hills, a couple of hours south of Naples — a protected marine park and UNESCO heritage landscape of mountains, forests, olive and fig groves, and the Greek ruins of Paestum. All within three kilometres of the ocean, where cool breezes come off the water twice a day like clockwork. Campania is famed for volcanic soils, but Cilento was underwater during Vesuvius's last great eruptions: here the ground is limestone, sandstone and clay — the clay deep enough to let the estate dry-farm without irrigation.
Dry-Farmed by Conviction
Bruno believes vines produce their best grapes when forced to drive roots deep in search of water, not babied by irrigation. The Cilento clay makes that conviction farmable — the wines' tension is geology plus stubbornness.
Selection Massale
Where possible the vineyards are worked with selection massale rather than modern clones — because modern clonal selections of indigenous varieties lack the complexity of older stock and ignore the beauty of Aglianico's power. Genetics as heritage.
Aglianicone, Rescued
Among the varieties the duo champions is Aglianicone, a forgotten local grape they bottle as a delicious varietal wine — the Cilento's own archive, opened bottle by bottle.
Solar since 2007
The winery introduced solar panels in 2007 and has been energy self-sufficient ever since — off the grid by choice, a decade and a half before it became an industry talking point.
Winemaking — Nervous System, Not Muscle
The house style is a deliberate counter-proposal to Campania's reputation for big, powerful wines: limited extraction, old oak, delicacy and elegance. Fermentations are on native yeasts; the only addition is a small dose of sulphur, mostly at bottling. Bruno is a minimalist but not a dogmatist — some vintages have gone to 50 ppm if the wine needed it; he'd rather a clean, drinkable wine than a pure ideology.
The weekly calendar is the organising wit: seven wines, one for each day — a Mercoledi of Fiano fermented in steel and left on its lees until bottling; a Lunedi of Primitivo direct-pressed and fermented three weeks on Fiano skins; a Giovedi of Aglianico from the prized Acciaroli vineyard beside the coast. Bruno's stated aim for his wines in this period: 'more luminous… based on the nervous system rather than muscle.'
The amphora trend, meanwhile, gets the maverick's famous mockery — he dislikes amphorae as vessels and mocks the trend as a pretentious show, a contrarian note that sets Tardis apart from the clay-fixated mainstream of natural wine. Old oak and patience are the instruments here; the wines are all the more distinctive for it.
The Wines — A Bottle to Open Every Night
Seven wines for seven days, plus friends: Fiano in steel, Primitivo on Fiano skins, Aglianico from Acciaroli, the rescued Aglianicone — none over 500 cases, all native-fermented with a whisper of sulphur.
Giovedi
Aglianico — Campania IGTThe week's red heart: Aglianico from the prized Acciaroli vineyard — steep limestone, granite and schist terraces beside the coast, destemmed, skin-fermented 3–4 days, pressed into old oak, bottled unfined and unfiltered with 25 ppm SO2. Just over 200 cases; 14%. Salt-air Aglianico, luminous rather than muscular.
Mercoledi
Fiano — Campania IGTWednesday's white: Fiano fermented in stainless steel and left on its lees until bottling — bright, textured, saline, a slight savoury edge over citrus. Jamie Goode gave the 2016 93 points; it remains the range's calling card for the Cilento's white soul.
Lunedi
Primitivo on Fiano skins — rosatoThe week's most original idea: Primitivo direct-pressed, then fermented for three weeks on Fiano skins — pale pink, spicy, herbal, fresh and detailed. 94 points from Wine Anorak; a Monday wine by name, a sommelier's wine by nature.
Aglianicone & Fratelli Felix
Rescued varieties & friends' blendThe archive corner: Aglianicone, the forgotten Cilento grape, bottled as a varietal; and Fratelli Felix, a Rosso of Barbera, Sangiovese and Aglianico. The edges of the calendar — where the duo's curiosity and the region's lost varieties meet.
Legacy — The Cilento, from Oil to Wine
The first legacy is Bruno's own thirty-year arc: when the De Conciliis siblings started, the Cilento had a handful of wineries and a reputation for bulk and oil; today the zone counts dozens of estates, and its wines are reviewed worldwide. Vigneti Tardis is the second act of the man who arguably wrote the first.
The second legacy is the bridge: Tardis welded one of London's sharpest natural wine palates to a Cilento farm, and in doing so opened a permanent route from the region's hills to the world's wine bars. The wines' names — days of the week, not grand crus — smuggled the Cilento onto everyday tables abroad.
The third is ecological proof: organic since the 1990s, solar-powered since 2007, dry-farmed on clay, selection massale in the rows. Long before sustainability decks, the estate simply lived it. 'I wanted to make revolution,' Bruno says of his youth. In the Cilento, he did.