La Valle del Sole

La Valle del Sole is a certified organic estate winery in Offida in the southern part of Le Marche, a region on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Silvano Nicolo, his wife Angela and daughters Alessia and Valeria manage the small farm. The winery is now a 4th-generation family business.

The vines sit at 300 metres above sea level, the estate lying midway between the highest mountains of central Italy–the Sibillini and Laga mountains inland to the west and the Adriatic Sea to the east. The Gran Sasso range to the south-west also plays a role in creating constant ventilation and high day-night temperature differences, which ensures long, slow ripening in which complexity is built but freshness maintained.

The Nicolos manage 15ha of land of which 9ha of vines. The oldest plots date back to 1960 and they have been certified organic since 1990. A vineyard replanting project was undertaken between 2000 and 2005 to keep as many of the old vines of Montepulciano, Passerina and Pecorino as possible – all of which are native to the area around Offida, but create plots which were less ‘mixed’ in terms of grape varieties, and replace missing vines.

The winery produces around 30,000 bottles of wine of which one-third is red.