masseria frattasi family business family property winemakers wineproducers wine makers wine producers wine wines falanghina aglianico donnalaura montesarchio benevento campania italy samnium samnites

A FAMILY BUSINESS Located at the feet of Vergilius’ Magnum Taburnum, as loafed in the Aeneid and in the Georgics, Frattasi’s Farmhouse is an ancient seventeenth century building, perfectly kept by its owners, Clemente Cecere, the leading role in it, and his family. The vineyards of Falanghina and Aglianico grow up around the huge white building in chalky stone, with the first sort of grapes growing up at 380m on the sea level, and the second, the Aglianico, growing up at superior height. There are 7000 plants per hectares, for a production of 70 quintals/hectar.
	The vineyards are all biologically cultivated. The registers of Avalos, Princes of Montesarchio and Pescara, and Marquesses of Vasto, preserved in the Avalos’ Palace in Napels, testify that in 1576, the Ceceres already grew their vineyards and produced wine in the farmhouses of Montesarchio. The activity never ceased. The varieties of grape are those typical ones of Sannio Caudino. Right under the Taburno survived the only kind of Falanghina which in the sixties was still being cultivated in this deep chalky district. That’s why today in Samnium saying Bonea’s Falanghina means saying a first quality wine.
The wine company is located and developed in the very farmhouse, in the new cellar, as big as 1000m², realized with the most advanced techniques of the oenology, with an external clothing in with chalky basalt. The portal bears particular ceramics dating back to the age of the samnites: inserts coming from graves of a necropolis of the fifth century b. C., discovered during usual works in the vineyard of the Masseria Feoli, in Varoni di Montesarchio. In the 1950’s, the owner of the property, don Antonio Cecere, saved the only remaining Falanghina grapes which survived at the feet of the Taburno mountain, between Montesarchio and Bonea, what now constitutes a first choice grape.
For this reason the wine of the property is named Falanghina di Bonea. The rooms for the preservation of the reserve are directly located in the farmhouse, with constant humidity and temperature all the year long. The wine maturates in new wooden French oaks of 225 litres, from the forests of Allier, Vosges and Nevers.