For Matteo I Parieti is all about three main themes. Stones: the typical dry-stone walls (“parieti” in dialect) that embrace and protect the vineyards. Family, from both father’s and mother’s side: passion, commitment and contradiction, strongly intertwined and firmly anchoring the present to the past. Love: unconsciously cultivated at a tender age and then blooming as an adult, the love towards his land, the Murge, and their unique expression. And then their was the decision, nurtured by that love, to return to his roots and to personally take care of the lands and masseria his grandfather had left him.
The company, to which the lands and Masseria Santoiemma refer, is in Gioia del Colle – in Contrada Montursi – and produces and processes its own products: grapes, olives and cereals. The vineyards, mainly sapling and espalier, are Primitivo, Verdeca, Minutolo and other native varieties, and the main objective is to enhance their most authentic expression.
Going back to stones. We mentioned the dry-stone walls, but there are other stones than can be found in the Primitivo vineyards, of two different kinds: Carparo (a typical calcareous tuff), compact and easy to work with, the same that was used to build the castle of Frederick II in Gioia del Colle, and million-year-old limestone, hard and long-lasting, whose multiple influences lead to different sensory characteristics within the same variety.
The project I Parieti is build on these foundations, these unique and distinctly territorial expressions: the intent is to grow and produce products - wine, olive oil, cereals - that perfectly represent this landscape, yet unexpressed in its potentials, and to carry out a project that is agricultural as well as cultural, perfectly in synch with the history of this place, but also capable to interrupt the tendency of denying and thus betraying that very history in attempt of a rather unlikely modernisation.
