There are a scarce handful of major Sagrantino producers in Umbria. If you want to know which they are, take a trip to your local (outside of Italy) wine vendor. Whoever makes the sole bottle—if you’re lucky to find even the one—of Sagrantino on that shelf can be considered a big producer. Why? Well, the little guys don’t have the time or resources to focus on export; many don’t even have a website. Instead, small producers focus on digging their toehold in the Umbrian wine market. Which is quite Umbrian, if you think about. They are doing what they’re doing,  like their parents and grandparents before them. Even the young and hip wine producers follow those old traditions but with a modern twist, their tattooed selves striving to push the quality ever upward.  

To save you a trip to your wine shop just when you’re settling into a nice afternoon of reading, I’ll tell you that if you find any Sagrantino at all on your local shelves, it’ll likely come from Antonelli, Caprai, or Scacciadiavoli. 

It’s important to point out that big wineries aren’t necessarily producing lower quality wines, less deserving of a visit. In our modern emphasis on artisanal producers, it can be easy to seek out the little guy, assuming that more care will be given to the wine. But that is not always true, particularly in Umbria where Sagrantino is a passion for big and small producers alike. 

In fact, I advocate seeking out a major producer on your visit as they are more likely to have an accessible wine operation, which translates to tours arranged in a snap and tastings with sommeliers who speak English nuanced enough to help you discover subtle flavors in the glass. I have no doubt you’ll enjoy your visit. 

Let me tell you what I mean. 

Years ago I visited Antonelli winery, and that was my first glimpse into the Umbrian wine scene. It’s gorgeous there, the tour is informative, and the wines are quite good.  In short, I had a memorable time.

More recently my friends Max and Cristiana of Ciao, Andiamo took Keith and me to Scacciadiavoli. This time, with my book project afoot,  I arrived armed with a notebook—leaving nothing to my wine-addled memory. Cristiana knows me well, and started to ask where my notebook was before laughing as she noticed me pulling it out of my bag. “I knew you wouldn’t come without it,” she smiled warmly, taking my arm as she pulled me to meet Liù, one of the owners of the Scacciadiavoli.

Relationships are key in Italy, and I’d wager especially so in Umbria which in many ways scribes the same circles and connections as generations ago. So I sat back and enjoyed the reunion, listening to the Italian words wash over me before spinning into the clear sky. Cristiana, Max, and Liù  caught up and shared stories, reminding themselves of happy times together and commiserating around the pandemic and its sequelae.

The joy of their reunion spilled like sunlight, and Liù pulled me into the warmth. She clasped her hands to her chest in meeting me and Keith; so, so excited to welcome newcomers to her vineyard after a pandemic-defined season. I never would have predicted her beaming welcome when I plucked a bottle of Scacciadiavoli’s Sagrantino from the shelves of Charlottesville’s Wine Warehouse. To be honest, when I purchased wine back in Virginia, I hardly spared a thought for that wine’s journey, the people who shepherded it from grape to bottle. All I thought about was making Siena’s favorite gnocchi in Sagrantino sauce. 

Scacciadiavoli is named for the tiny village on the edge of the estate where an exorcist once lived, the name referring to a demon’s flight. Pretty evocative of the age and storied nature of the vineyard, which lies at the intersection of Montefalco, Gualdo Cattaneo, and Giano dell Umbria.

The winery began in the late 1800’s by a Roman prince named Ugo Boncompagni Ludovisi who saw the land as an opportunity to get in on the burgeoning Italian wine trade. He understood that maximum financial reward lay in exporting, and to that end he determined to bottle a Chianti-style wine in Umbria. After all, at that point, Chianti was the favorite of wine drinkers outside of Italy. His goal? To export one million liters a year. 

Back then, Sagrantino was not the illustrious vine it is now, so he used the local, ancient grapes to cut the more popular Sangiovese. In that way, the wine he made was akin to our modern Montefalco Rosso, which is a blend of Sagrantino, Sangiovese, and Merlot (and indeed, Scacciavioli’s Montefalco Rosso is quite excellent, perhaps due to those years of training). 

In 1919, Ludovisi sold the winery to pay off his debts. The new owner was a Fascist, and thus hung onto the winery only until the end of World War II, when all Italian Fascist holdings were seized and sold. Local farmers bought Scacciadiavoli before soon after selling it to Amilcare Pambuffetti in 1954. In his youth, Pambuffetti had worked Scacciadiavoli’s land for Ludovosi, the Roman prince, before spending his adult years acquiring economic stability as a food merchant, distributing oil, eggs, cereals, and the beets that were turned into sugar at Foligno’s factory. Indeed, the Pambuffetti family still today distributes local agricultural products. 

In 1977, Pambuffeti’s sons took over all the agricultural interests, and in 1990 the family pivoted to focus on wine production. By this point, Scacciadiavoli had been producing wine for almost a hundred years. 

Ludovisi’s lineage was peppered with cardinals, a pope, a mathematician, and scholars. That kind of thoughtful ambition is evident in the design of the winery, which is one of the oldest properties in Montefalco. The building is set against a hillside, in such a way that all four levels have access to the outside. The layout of the building allows for naturally occurring variation between the floors in terms of temperature, ventilation, and humidity. Nowadays, using architecture to take advantage of the position in the earth isn’t so novel. But at the time, Ludovisi’s design broke all architectural molds. The building’s organization also means that gravity can do some of the heavy lifting, decreasing the reliance on outside energy.

In the fall, handpicked grapes arrive to the top of the winery from Scacciadiavoli’s 130 hectares (40 of which are dedicated to grapes—16 Sagrantino, 15 other red which is mostly Sangiovese, and the rest whites, mostly of the indigenous variety like Grechetto and Trebbiano Spoletino, along with some Chardonnay for blending purposes). Here, the grapes are deposited in machines that are specially designed to remove the stems and foliage. Some kinds of wines are improved by those tannic stems, but Sagrantino grapes, with their extra thick skin and large pips, are already high on the tannic scale. 

The grapes are crushed and then the juice flows through pipes to the floor below, where fermentation occurs. On this floor we found both stainless steel and wood containers for vinification. In the spirit of the winery’s original proprietor, Scacciadiavoli is consistently in quest of pushing the envelope of Umbria’s wine potential. A telling example is their Trebbiano Spoletino, which is aged in four different containers, including different kinds of ceramic amphorae and an untoasted wooden barrel. Each vessel adds its own character to the developing wine, before the wines are combined for nine months of development within the bottle. The process makes for a nuanced, balanced white wine. Not totally white though, a portion of the grapes are macerated for a month with the skin on, adding a touch of color (and complicated flavor) to the finished Trebbiano Spoletino. 

In fact, the Trebbiano Spoletino, though quite different from what you think of as the native character of the wine, was one of my favorites from this winery. The notes of white flowers and white tea, perked with a hint of paprika prompted me to linger over every shifting sip. We even noted some flavors of sage and almond. 

The Grechetto was also lovely, a summery, refreshing white. Fruity and floral, it has a short and clean finish. The final white on Scacciadiavoli’s docket is Montefalco Bianco. There are only a handful of wineries making Montefalco Bianco, and frankly I didn’t even know it existed until Liù poured me a glass. Scacciadiavoli makes theirs from 50% of those Trebbiano Spoletino grapes, 30% Grecchetto, and 20% Chardonnay. It’s more aged that whites typically are and has a bigger structure and longer finish, with notes of stone fruit and nuts.

On the floor beneath those whites, Liù pointed out the wooden barrels for aging Montefalco Rosso as well as a concrete tank which was built in 1919 and holds 110,000 liters of wine. Fifty percent of Scacciadiavoli’s production is Montefalco Rosso and the wine is the traditional combination of Sagrantino (15%), Sangiovese (60%), and Merlot (25%). The wine is aged for twelve months in oak barrels that are hand-me-downs from  Sagrantino production. The wine then waits at least six more months in the bottle before it hits the streets. It’s a structured wine, though not as big or complex as Sagrantino. This makes it wonderful for every day drinking. Like Sagrantino, Montefalco Rosso is excellent with grilled meats and salumi, but it has interesting notes of caramel, spice, smoke, pipe tobacco, red berries, and vanilla, that make it a worthy wine on its own merits, not just as Sagrantino’s humble little sister. 

Throughout the winery, Liù pointed out channels to collect the run-off water for agricultural purposes. Meanwhile, rain water collects in a boiler to create steam for cleaning the barrels. 

On the winery’s lowest level is where the magic of Sagrantino happens (other than the warm Umbrian sun, of course). Here are the oak barrels for both the Montefalco Sagrantino Secco (which you’ll enjoy with your steak) and Passito wines (which you’ll find on dessert menus).

The Sagrantino Secco is aged for 24 months, 50% of it in large wooden barrels which contribute some fruit flavor, and 50% in small wooden barrels. Fifteen percent of those small wooden barrels are new, excellent for imparting flavors of spice and oak, as well as rounding out tannins. When the barrels are no longer new, that’s when they join the Montefalco Rosso team. 

The Sagrantino is then aged in the cellar for another year before being bottled. Liù, and in fact everyone at Scacciadiavoli, speaks of the Sagrantino in hushed and reverent tones. It’s their flagship wine, their raison d’etre so to speak. It’s big and bright with notes typical of Sagrantino like cherries and balsamic and herbs and smoke. It’s a smooth Sagrantino, with tannins that are more delicate than in some others, which makes it more approachable, especially for the novice Sagrantino drinker. 

Perhaps even easier to the palate unfamiliar with Sagrantino’s fiery tannins is the original form of Sagrantino—that Passito. Liù says that early Sagrantino was begun before Christmas to consume for Easter, hence “Sagrantino “ which hails from sagra (another theory is that farmers drank the wine at holy days such as Christmas and Easter). Sagra doesn’t have a real counterpoint in English, the best translation is a festival with a spiritual or heartfelt twist. A straight up festival, like Umbria Jazz is a festa. Spello’s celebration of bread and olive oil, their historic sustenance, is a sagra.  

Sagrantino Passito is a sweet wine pressed from Sagrantino grapes which have been dried in the sun. The sugar and tannins are balanced with a year of aging in oak. People often serve it with what are called cantucci in Tuscany and tozzetti in Umbria (and biscotti everywhere else). I suspect because neighboring Tuscany’s Vin Santo and biscotti was all the rage for awhile. But to my mind, those somewhat dry and almond-y cookies are a perfect pairing with Tuscany’s nod to Passito. Not so much with Umbria’s version, which carries the flavor of red fruits. Liù suggested pairing Montefalco Sagrantino Passito with dark chocolate and that is an excellent notion. At Vinosofia, Graziano served me a glass of Sagrantino Passito with Fabbri cherries nestled in a jot of aged balsamic alongside a piece of creamy blue cheese and that made me sit back in astonishment. 

In any case, I just want to take this moment to plug Sagrantino Passito as an excellent souvenir. The small bottles are thinner than traditional wine bottles and therefore easier to transport than Sagrantino Secco. Plus, since Sagrantino’s tannins make it a wine lauded for longevity, years after your trip to Italy, you can take down a bottle and fondly remember your Umbrian days. 

All told, Scacciadiavoli produces about a quarter of a million bottles of wine a year. It varies of course, from year to year. As I write this in 2021, we’ve had what every Umbrian will tell you is the weirdest spring in memory. You can’t stop in a bar or talk to someone in the street without them saying that they’ve never, ever seen weather as pazzo as this. It’s a fun conversational topic, particularly if your language isn’t up to snuff, but it’s understandably less entertaining for farmers. 

Liù said that the season’s late frost killed the buds of their Sangiovese vines and they can expect only 50% of production this year. The Sagrantino will be okay because it buds later and so didn’t get bitten by the frost. But as the weather has failed to warm accordingly, they are a month behind. File this under “more things I never considered when I picked up a bottle of Sagrantino back in Charlottesville.”

We sighed together at the year’s challenges, before stepping out of Scacciadiavoli’s winery. Liù pointed out a building recently constructed for wine storage. Her father’s brainchild was the creation of a sparkling Sagrantino and it’s becoming quite popular, so they require more room for storage, as well as space to do the remuage, a fancy French term that describes hand turning bottles of sparkling wine to consolidate the sediment and leave the wine clear. Liu’s father seems to have rightly called the increasing demand for sparkling wine from indigenous grapes, as it’s the fastest growing sector of their demand. Annually, they now produce 25,000 bottles of their sparkling Sagrantino.

I have to tell you, this sparkling Sagrantino is a revelation. The grapes are harvested earlier to access those bright citrus notes, and the Brut is vinified as a white wine (skins removed before the fermentation process) and is mostly Sagrantino with 15% Chardonnay. It’s aged for 72 months and is freshly floral, with a subtle peach undertone. The Rosé on the other hand is 100% Sagrantino and aged 24 months. The higher concentration of Sagrantino grapes makes for a more tannic structure balanced with hints of citrus and flowers. It also lends itself well to aging. Hence, their newer building to hold all that sparkling Sagrantino.

In front of the winery are two low-slung buildings, like arms ready to embrace visitors to Scacciadiavoli. These were once the stables for the horses that worked the land, but now they house the business end of the winery. One arm is devoted to you, the visitor, and includes a terrace shaded by flowering vines. It’s here that you can enjoy a tasting, as I did, on that oddly cool but also intensely lovely May morning. 

My children had insisted that it was very strange that we’d be heading out before they even woke up, our sights set on wine while they were rubbing their eyes and debating the merits of toast with currant jelly or orange jam.

If I had any reservations about drinking before noon, they vanished in the perfect happiness of settling myself on the terrace as Liù regaled us with stories of arriving in the United States years ago with pallets of her family’s wine. She and her boyfriend drove up and down the country with a fully-stocked van, offering samples to distributors to inveigle them to carry Scacciadiavoli’s wines. 

It worked.

And in retrospect, it’s funny to imagine that the whole reason we have Scacciadiavoli Montefalco Sagrantino at my Charlottesville wine shop is because of one young woman’s ambitious road trip. 

But that sort of sums up Scacciadiavoli. It has the gravitas of history and taste, coupled with youthful innovation and entrepreneurship. I’m thrilled that I’ll have this wine available to me when I get home. I’ll pop a bottle open on a festive Saturday night when my husband is grilling steak, and remember that mix of historic vines with newer varieties, rolling out as far as the eye can see. As I sip, I’ll imagine Liù and her family gazing at the sky, studying their barrels, watching over those tender grapes, as they devise new ways to honor their past while embracing their future. 

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