As promised, I put together a little report on our vist to Emidio Pepe as part of our trip to Italy a couple weeks back. It wasn’t a wine trip- after a couple of years of dropping hints, my family agreed to do a Pepe visit on a Rome-Venice-Lake Garda-trip. And now they all can’t wait to go back to Pepe. The visit exceeded expectations. Like, it didn’t just go to 11, but all the way to 12.
The agriturismo is one of the three main structures along with the aging cellar and vinification/concrete tank room. Wish I had more pics of the rooms and lobby/terraces- it’s a really lovely bed and breakfast with modern amenities. I have a ton of pics, here’s a few- my daughter is working on a vlog of the trip-I’ll post that at some point.
We arrived around 2:30- After checking in I walked out on the patio and was able to chat with the man himself for a minute after Elisa brought him down to the gardens (he’s declined a good bit the past year, unfortunately, but not bad for 92!). We shook hands-exchanged buona sera and I proceeded to tell him how much his wines meant to me. He understood half of what I was saying, but he smiled and nodded, and then I let him enjoy his view.
I had reached out prior to our visit to arrange a tour of the vineyards earlier in the day. There is a separate cellar tour given to all hospitality and dinner guests that begins at 7:30 prior to dinner. We were fortunate to arrive and find that Elisa had cleared a couple hours to spend with us in the afternoon. We toured around various hillsides in the area to visit their 17 hectares of vines - in the “farm truck” as Elisa called it after numerous apologies for how dirty it was inside. “Remember, we’re farmers first,” she would say. Loved that.
I have a series of short videos- here’s Elisa describing the low density planting and pergola. This is in Branella vineyard- first vines Emidio harvested in 1964. Starting in 2020, the Branella and Casa Pepe vineyard designations are added to the MdA labels.
Branella
This is a new pergola-type system they are using to train some new Pecorino vines. Another five years or so they’ll know how it turned out.
The views from the agriturismo are just stunning. It’s a sleepy area- definitely farm country.
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Pro tip- it’s an easy 2.5 hour drive from Rome, but we figured, why not take a break for lunch on the beach along the way? We stopped in Guilianova (just pick a beach town) for lunch, and then it’s an easy 30 minutes up the hill from the beach to Pepe. Lunch at Novavita Beach Club. It was fine. They had Pepe on the list for $40, but considering that’s where we were headed- we had this little local number that was quite good with squid ink pasta and other seafood stuffs.
More to come…from cellar tour and dinner…
