Villa Matilde Wine

In the 1950s Francesco Avallone, a successful young lawyer in Naples, set out on a unique mission to bring back to life the ‘immortal Falerno’ sung by the great poets of ancient Rome. The wine, Italy’s oldest, is recorded back to the first century A.D., but phylloxera wiped out the production in the late 1800s. In synergy with the University of Naples, his research team found the best surviving vines and patiently grafted cuttings onto new rootstock, obtaining twenty original clones of Falanghina, Aglianico and Piedirosso. Today, Villa Matilde is one of Campania’s, and Italy’s, leading wineries, still championing these local varieties under the care of brother and sister team, Salvatore and Maria Ida Avallone.