L'Acino

  • Calabria, Italy
L'Acino

Thank you to importer Louis/Dressner for this L'Acino profile

(Click here for LDM's L'Acino visit notes, photos and profile and here for L'Acino's website)

Dino Briglio founded L'Acino in 2006 with two childhood friends who have since amicably bowed out of the project. As natives of the mountain town of San Marco Argentano, the winery is a communal effort to express the oft-forgotten possibilities of Calabrian terroir. When the project began, the three friends were working full-time in unrelated fields: Antonello was a film director, Dino a historian and Emilio a lawyer. Though they had no viticultural or winemaking experience, their love of wine was enough to start an estate. And the trio's taste for vini naturali meant focusing their attention on organic viticulture and minimal intervention winemaking.

After a year of searching far and wide for a small vineyard, the friends struck gold with a hectare of the indigenous white grape Mantonico. Purchased from an old farmer who deemed the land too hard to work, this picturesque vineyard is located right on the border of the Pollino park, the largest natural park in Italy. Soon thereafter, the guys were able to purchase a nearby 1.5 hectare parcel of the local red grape Magliocco. While converting both parcels to organics, they produced their first wines in the 2007, a white called Mantonicoz and a red named Tocco Magliocco. At 650 meters elevation and exposed North, both these sites are particularly cool, providing a lighter, more elegant style than most would expect of Calabrian wine.

The next step was seeing something through from the beginning, and so a new search began for a suitable terroir that had never been planted in vines. This again took about a year, but resulted in the discovery of a stunning, sandy coteau that the guys have planted in Magliocco and Mantonico from massale, along with Guarnaccia Nera and Bianca, Pecorello and Greco, much of it in franc de pied. Planted in 2007, these young vines produce the estate's two entry level wines, both called Chora and both extremely fun, lively and surprisingly light gulpers.

Dino, now fully at the helm of l'Acino since 2016, works ten hectares of vines and rents five (mostly of older vines). All the vines are between 400 and 650 meters elevation. Though he's never studied viticulture or enology, he is the son and grandson of farmers and the work has proved to be instinctive. And while production did not stray from the estate's historic four wines for many years, he has began experimenting and releasing new cuvées in 2016 with Giramondo, a macerated Malvasia.

The wines ferment off their native yeasts, mostly in stainless steel vats, though a small amount of old French oak is used for the older's vines' best grapes. Vinifications take place without addition or retractions, save a small amount of sulfur at bottling. The whites in particular are wildly original and compelling, while the reds are a pure, quaffable joy.

Image Producer PRODUCT Description Country / Region

DB1118-20
Organic
L'Acino IGP Calabria Bianco "Chora"
2020
Mantonico Bianco
100% Mantonico Bianco (native Calabrian variety, likely a parent of the red Gaglioppo). "Chora Bianco" comes from L'Acino's younger vines...
Italy

DB7049-20
Organic
L'Acino IGP Calabria Bianco "Giramondo"
2020
Malvasia
100% Malvasia. From 20-year-old vines of a smaller-berried sub-variety of Malvasia, grown organically on schistous, iron-rich soils at 520...
Italy

DB1147-20
Organic
L'Acino IGP Calabria Rosso "Chora"
2020
Magliocco
100% Magliocco Tondo. "Chora Rosso" comes mainly from L'Acino's younger vines on sandy soils at the foot of Monte Pollino in northern...
Italy

DB4289-21
Organic
L'Acino IGP Calabria Rosso "Agata!"
2021
Aglianico
100% Aglianico. From a mere 6 rows of 70-year-old Aglianico vines amidst a larger Magliocco vineyard in the Frascineto area of northern...
Italy
DB4406-17
Organic
L'Acino IGP Calabria Rosso "Giacobino"
2017
Magliocco
100% Magliocco. From a parcel of 100-year-old vines on heavy clay soils (the site is called "Fornace", in reference to the tile-making...
Italy