ABOUT CHIARA
guest winemaker

I graduated in Law in Rome in 2002 and, per my mother’s rosiest expectations, I should have become a lawyer. But I didn’t. Due to a series of family problems, our family’s ‘parallel’ agricultural activity had for some years become the family’s main activity — in fact, its only activity — and things were not going well at all. Owing to a string of adverse circumstances, the family farm was no longer being managed with care. In addition, the world of wine was changing radically.

I chose to devote myself body and soul to our farm and our wine cellar, working single-heartedly to transform the enterprise from a producer of excellent bulk wine, to be sold by the tankful to bottlers inside and outside the region, into a producer of bottled wines that aimed to reproduce the authenticity, the elegance, and the freshness of our land, Abruzzo.

I have only been able to do this, and am only able to continue to do this, thanks to the help of my agronomist consultant and winemaker, Romano D’ Amario, who has been working at the company a lot longer than I have and who, in addition to insisting on always addressing me pleasantly in the third person, immediately set me on the right path by saying, “Doctor, never forget that the greatest tradition of the Ciavolich farm is found in its vineyard, not its wine cellar,” and thanks to a man whom I trust greatly, Francesco Falcone, who possesses a unique, irreplaceable, expert eye for managing the business of a farm, and thanks to the few (but excellent) Abruzzo wine producers who, with great generosity and nobility of mind, help me a lot with their tips and advice, and, above all, thanks to the help of all my close collaborators inside and outside the farm who, putting up with my somewhat cheerful and restless character and joining me in the challenge that I have set for myself, have for years been working with me, striving with enthusiasm, with effort, and (I believe) with a great deal of satisfaction toward the same goals that I have set for myself.

Last but not least, I am able to do it thanks to the spirit of a shared mission and the support that I find in my husband, Gianluca, and in my wonderful daughter, Beatrice (who, at the age of 7, already serves as a tour guide in our wine cellar), without whose help and patience I certainly wouldn’t be able to do what I do.

It is thanks to our family history, which my Aunt Giuliana began recounting to me when I was still in the cradle, and thanks to the greatness of mind of my father, a man of unreachable genius and insight, and thanks to the elegance and frankness of my young mother, a woman with enthusiasm for art, literature, and botany, that today I make wine, attempting to carry into the future an agricultural and cultural heritage inherited from an ancient family.

ABOUT CIAVOLICH

The Ciavolich family is an old family of wool merchants of Bulgarian origins who, to escape the advance of the Saracen invasion, took refuge in Italy in the town of Miglianico, in the province of Chieti around 1560.

The transition to land owners happened during the XVIII century. In 1853 Francesco Ciavolich built in Miglianico, opposite his private residence, the first winery, nowadays one of the most ancient and suggestive in Abruzzo, where to work independently grapes that came from the surrounding lands. At the end of the XIX century an important marriage marked the future path of the winery on Loreto Aprutino’s side: the one between Giuseppe Ciavolich and the noblewoman Ernesta Vicini from Loreto Aprutino. Donna Ernesta gave life in her private building in Chieti to one of the most active literary salon of the early century receiving among others her friends Costantino Bardella and Francesco Paolo Michetti.

'40
Her son Giustino was a cavalry officer during World War I and on returning during his retirement, he took care of the family’s properties passing down to his son Giuseppe Ciavolich the love for the land and a burning desire to hand down the estate. In autumn 1943 just after harvest, the German troops while retreating placed their general headquarters on the higher floors of the private residence in Miglianico allowing the family to stay in the underground winery. On 8th December of that same year the SS forced their evacuation. That was the last harvest to be produced in the ancient underground winery.

'60
In the 1960s from the inheritance division of Donna Ernestina, the family received the estate of Loreto Aprutino, in the province of Pescara, of circa 50 hectares. Here Giuseppe Ciavolich planted Montepulciano, Trebbiano and Cococciola varieties.

Nowadays Chiara continues cultivating to pass on an ancient history throughout wine, a red thread connecting past, present and future.