At Fattoria Coroncino, we don't produce wine.
The producer is someone who, having learned the techniques, replicates results for the market.
We've chosen a different path: we don't tell the vines what to do, we don't dictate their diet. We prune them according to their individuality. We allow the musts the same freedom to become their own wines.
Our goal is to allow the grapes to ripen without poisoning ourselves or the land. From those same grapes and no others, we obtain good, exciting, and always digestible wines.
Partly for fun, partly for love, and partly out of need
Our story
Fattoria Coroncino was founded in Staffolo in 1981 by the hands and hearts of Lucio Canestrari and Fiorella De Nardo.
As a student in his hometown of Rome, Lucio helped his father run the small family restaurant in Piazza Mazzini. It was a typical Roman osteria, opened by his grandparents in the mid-1920s, which Lucio's father had helped grow to fame. For Lucio, it was a familiar, not at all unpleasant, environment that somehow already hinted at his future. In any case, the osteria, a unique blend of skills and passion, was a true school of life for him: there he understood the importance—in cooking as in the world—of using the right ingredients, calibrated with balance and harmony, and understood that all this could be achieved through the union between the absolute quality of the resources available and one's own expertise.
For Fiorella, the countryside has always been part of her essence, as familiar as the air she breathes. In her childhood home in Bibano, near Conegliano, the family was already producing wine and lived in harmony with the rhythm of the seasons, made up of hard-working springs and summers and long winter silences by the stove. A place where her sensitive, reserved, and quiet nature, uniterested by the city's sparkles, found peace and serenity.
Lucio and Fiorella meet and fall in love, exchanging a glance one day, at the Milan train station.
Lucio has finished school and completed his military service; the osteria awaits him in Rome, but for Fiorella's sake, he decides to change his plans. His great-grandparents were from Staffolo, and there they owned a house, where he and Fiorella move. Later, in 1981, they purchase the house in Contrada Coroncino, which Lucio renovates for three years, dismantling and reassembling piece by piece, with the perseverance of someone driven by a noble purpose and without a penny, learning from scratch by doing and redoing. Around it, there are just a few rows of vineyards, some “maritate” vines, a few olive trees, walnut trees, and mulberry trees.
To build their life together there, Lucio and Fiorella try to make the most of what they have, wherever possible. Farming, so poetic in its narrative, proves physically exhausting and economically humiliating. Lucio and Fiorella feel that, for their own lives and for the sake of their future children, they need to work hard.
Then, Lucio realizes that there is only one field of agricultural activity in which the producer can determine the price of his labor: wine.
A glass of wine tells the story of a year in the life of the vineyard
So, Lucio and Fiorella first plant half a hectare of vineyard, then another 7000 meters. The following year, they plant another two hectares. These were primarily small mass selections, a genuine effort to recover and preserve clones hidden in the old vineyards of those who, tired of tending them, were uprooting. They did so with great sacrifices, working in the meantime in local wineries and restaurants to pay the bills.
In 1988, Lucio and Fiorella seize the opportunity to rent and then purchase a 1,8 hectare vineyard in Spescia, on the slopes of the hills towards Cupramontana. The vineyard was sold at a favorable price: it was apparently diseased and located in a very steep place. Today, it is one of the most iconic vineyards of Fattoria Coroncino, the Gaiospino vineyard.
The vineyards begin to bear fruit, allowing Lucio and Fiorella to free themselves from outside work in 1989. Little by little, they plant more vineyards, growing from just 600, then 1.200, and finally producing 16.000 bottles.
Meanwhile, their three children are born: Gaia in 1983, Valerio in 1985, and Fulvio in 1994.
From there, their story as farmer-winemakers began, developing naturally and spontaneously, just like their love story, working hard over the next twenty years to bring the company to stability.
Slightly less obvious have been the decisions that would later define Fattoria Coroncino and remain part of our philosophy to this day.
Lucio had learned from his father that whatever choice he wanted to make in life, he had to first understand its direction, whether it was becoming a host and offering a dish, or a vigneron offering a wine.
Lucio and Fiorella, who share every aspect of life, decide to produce only what they feel is right for them and in the most correct way. Since 1993, they have no longer relied on external guidance for vineyard management, effectively ceasing all fertilization and never resuming it.
Their gaze becomes sensitive as they observe the results of these decisions: the vines produce less, but the grapes have a unique flavor, telling a different story from previous ones and representing them profoundly. Even earlier, they decide to harvest only ripe grapes, since wine is essentially fruit juice, contrary to the winemaking trends of the time.
You work with what you can, doing what you can. Then, ‘n do arivo, metto ‘n segno
The awards are not long in coming. Their work and choices lead them, in 1999, to receive the prestigious "Città di Staffolo" award for having brought the town's name to international guides and for having earned the first historic "Tre Bicchieri" for Gaiospino, demonstrating that agriculture can be a cultural vehicle equal to art. To this day, it remains one of the few cases in which such an award has gone to a company that is a symbol of the area, rather than to a single artist or intellectual.
For Lucio and Fiorella, the work continues exactly as it began: helping the vines grow, harvesting the grapes, bringing the wines to the cellar, and "finding" what goes well together to bottle them.
Fattoria Coroncino's fame grows. At fairs, customers quickly ask Lucio to guarantee the quality and number of bottles produced. But Lucio and Fiorella don't buy grapes from others: they only harvest what the vineyard gives them. So Lucio, with his Roman wisdom, thinks so and writes it everywhere, on the labels and wine boxes: 'n do’ arivo, metto ‘n segno!, which in the roman speech means “where I get, I put a mark on”.
Over time, this is how the wines of Fattoria Coroncino are born, from Bacco to Stracacio, often reflecting outstanding vintages and exceptional vineyards, all expressions of the essence of the Staffolo territory.
Our winery is a hymn to honesty: we harvest what we find, not what we've planned
The love and commitment of his parents inspires Lucio and Fiorella's second son, Valerio, to develop a passion for the winery.
Born in 1985, Valerio began working steadily at Fattoria Coroncino in 2005 after 6 years of winemaking school, 4 of which in Conegliano. From Lucio, he learned to seek balance, to not blindly believe everything he's told, but to observe things with detachment and critical eye. Valerio himself seeks a more careful approach to the various stages,in accordance with his character, while still striving to preserve the strength and incredible richness that have historically distinguished Fattoria Coroncino wines, but without mimicking the past.
Despite his illustrious heritage and extensive technical knowledge, he humbly admits that he's "ignorant" of how to "construct" grapes to achieve a certain result: he loves making a wine that it's his own, still remaining a product of the land from which it comes.
After Lucio's passing in 2021, Valerio, supported by Fiorella, now manages 14 hectares of certified Castelli di Jesi Verdicchio Riserva Classico, with 0.5 hectares of Sangiovese Grosso and Syrah. Beyond carrying on his parents' work, he has always believed that the true strength of a region lies in the unity of its protagonists; for this reason, for many years he has teamed up with other young producers in Staffolo, sharing ideas and jointly promoting the territory and their passion for its fruits.
In the Cellar: Listening and respect
For us, the cellar is a place where we pay the utmost attention to the inclinations of each vineyard and its must, respecting their journey.
We therefore use native yeasts with spontaneous fermentations. We give the wines time to develop and mature, independently, on their fine lees.
At bottling, we only blend wines that "play well together". The result is a wine that isn't a sin to be atoned for the next day, but a pleasant memory, thanks also to its low sulfite content (30-60 mg/l).
We only combine wines that "go well together" and "sound together"
The vineyards
Our vineyards, guardians of our corner of the Marche in the Castelli di Jesi area and largely born from historic mass selections from the 1970s and early 20th century, tell each its own story, both between the rows and in the bottle.
Strong vines with a long history, they have long found harmony with their land. Our soils have developed over the years, dividing into clay for a large part of our vineyards and limestone in a specific area in Cupramontana. From different soils, we produce different grapes, and therefore different wines.
We harvest only ripe and flavorful grapes, processing them with minimal sulfites. We do not buy grapes, we do not sell in bulk: every bottle is the essence of our land.
