Meet the winemaker: Lamiddia

Lamiddia is a project in Italy's Abruzzo founded by Davide Gentile and Marco Giuliani in 2010, when they made their first 1,000 bottles. They use a wide range of methods to encourage discovery in their winemaking, but one thing that remains is that they never remove or add anything, but try to find the best expression of each grape.

We had the opportunity to speak with Davide about his work. We hope you enjoy our conversation.

Can you tell me about your background? How did you and Marco meet, and what was your entry point to wine?

Marco and I have known each other since we were 3 years old - we're both from Abruzzo and have known each other forever, really. We went to school together and went to university together in Rome. I studied engineering and Marco studied communications, and it was around that time that we started drinking wine a bit more seriously - drinking more consciously. After my Bachelors degree, I moved to Milan to do my masters in engineering management, and Marco moved to Paris. From there, we started going to a low of wine fairs and tasting a lot of different wines. 

In 2008, we discovered natural wines and our approach to wine changed completely. At the same time, I was working in marketing and innovation at a consultant company and Marco was in sales. We started meeting a lot of winemakers and visited France, Spain, Germany and Italy and had fallen in love with everything about it - not just the result (the wine), but everything that goes into making it. I was in the big city at the time and I saw the love that winemakers had for what they do, and their way of life, it was all very inspiring to me. So in 2010 after some travelling across Beaujolais and Burgundy, we came back and decided to try making some wine for ourselves, to understand how it works.

At my grandmother's house in the mountains, where we have the cellar now, there was a small cantina where my grandfather used to make wine for himself, so we started making wine using this sort of ancestral tool. From the very beginning, we always knew it was possible to make with with just grapes, 100% and nothing else. Upon making it ourselves, we discovered that yes, it's possible, but it's also very difficult. We made five wines to explore the process and, coming back from Beaujolais, we decided to try carbonic maceration, which nobody was doing in Abruzzo. The experience of making wine was so profound for me that I left my job in Milan, moved back to Pescara and then Marco and I rented a small vineyard so that we could continue experimenting. We both worked still to support ourselves.

In 2014, we carried out works to make the cellar legal in terms of health, so this year was our first official vintage and we started selling the wine. We were able to buy a small field and planted it vine by vine, growing slowly to what we are now, which is 8 hectares with two cellars. The first which we call 'Origin' is in the mountains, at my grandmother's house, where we make small quantities of more premium wine, doing everything by hand, pressing by feet and using a barrel, concrete and amphora vessels to age the wine. The old methods. And the second, which we acquired in 2019, we call the 'Urban' because it's a hangar in Pescara where we work a little more technologically. The idea is always the same, but it's a different process.

Ever since the beginning we have liked experimenting - we have 30 different cuvées at the minute, with differing grapes, macerations, vessels, etc. It's a lot, but we like to always experiment and learn, speak to other winemakers to gather inspiration, and treating wine as a science, but there are many variables you cannot control. 

What's the winemaking history where you are?

Where we are, there are no winemakers and no vineyards - only trees, forests, and fields for sheep. But because of climate change, people now want to move into the mountains where we are because on the flat land, or even just a short way down the hill, people are struggling with the heat. We hope that we will be safe here for at least 10 more years.

Visit Lamiddia's RAW WINE profile to learn more.