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NATURAL WINES BY MONASTERO TRAPPISTE VITORCHIANO
These wines come from a convent of Cistercian Trappist nuns at Vitorchiano, near Viterbo in northern Lazio. The community has moved around: it was founded near Turin in 1875, spent decades at Grottaferrata outside Rome and settled in Vitorchiano in 1957. The sisters cleared bramble-covered land to plant their vines, about 5 hectares on volcanic soils rich in peperino stone. They do the vineyard work and the harvest by hand, and also make jams and tend gardens and orchards to support the monastery.
Since the 2000s Giampiero Bea, son of Paolo Bea from Montefalco in Umbria, has guided the cellar. Fermentations are wild, in steel and fibreglass tanks, with only a small dose of sulphur. Coenobium Ruscum is the skin-contact white, Trebbiano, Malvasia and Verdicchio left on the skins for over two weeks. Benedic is a pale, light red from equal parts Sangiovese and Ciliegiolo.
