Producer Portrait · Italy
Farnese Vini
Three friends without a vineyard, today 24 million bottles and contracts with smallholders.
Get to know Farnese Vini
In 1994, Valentino Sciotti, Filippo Baccalaro and Camillo De Iuliis founded a wine house in Ortona with around 1,500 Euros in start-up capital and without a single vineyard of their own. That has remained the model to this day. Since 2020, the group has been called Fantini Wines, and it continues to run the Farnese Vini brand.
Deliberately without its own vineyards
With a few exceptions, the house owns no vines of its own, working instead with several thousand hectares of contracted land belonging to smallholders in Abruzzo, Puglia, Basilicata, Campania, Sicily, Sardinia and Tuscany. Growers are paid according to quality and vineyard area, not grape volume. This reverses the usual incentive: those who harvest less but better are not paid worse for it.
Five times best Italian producer
At Mundus Vini, the house won the title "Best Italian Producer" in 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2026. The Edizione Cinque Autoctoni received the full score of 99 out of 99 from Luca Maroni in the Annuario 2015, in the "Campionissimi" group. Filippo Baccalaro, co-founder and oenologist, is responsible for 21 oenologists, with Alberto Antonini advising externally.
24 million bottles to 94 countries
96 per cent of production goes to export. The estate holds Equalitas sustainability certification and publishes its own sustainability report. It farms three parcels organically itself, including ten hectares of vines over 35 years old at the Tenuta Cantalupo.
Facts about the estate
- Country & Region
- Italy · Abruzzen
- Founded
- 1994 in Ortona, Abruzzo
- Model
- Contract farming with smallholders instead of its own vineyards
- Award
- Mundus Vini Best Italian Producer 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024, 2026
- Export
- 96 per cent, to 94 countries
Grape varieties
- Montepulciano d'Abruzzo
- Primitivo
- Negroamaro
- Malvasia Nera
- Sangiovese
- Aglianico
- Pecorino
- Falanghina
«We were three friends with a dream, without a vineyard, without a cellar, one could even say without a penny, but with an endless love of wine.»
Wines from Farnese Vini
Personally tasted and selected, direct from our warehouse in Ramsei, delivered throughout Switzerland.
Curious about Italy as a wine country?
History, grape varieties and regions: told concisely in the stories of the wine countries.