About Feudi di Guagnano

By Paul Caputo

Feudi di Guagnano is one of the leading lights of small volume winemaking in the Salento area of Puglia. Covering a number of different vineyards, all just less than a hectare, close to the town of Guagnano, the winery has quickly built an impressive reputation for Negroamaro and the region’s classic DOC wine - Salice Salentino.

Feudi di Guagnano began as a project to revive some of the abandoned vineyards around the village of Guagnano in the Arneo area of the Province of Lecce. When elderly people could no longer work the fields and found it difficult to convince their children to take up agricultural life, a number of old vineyards fell out of production. Many were viticultural treasures, planted as ‘albarello’ bush vines more than half a century before.

Gianvito Rizzo and his business partners Franco, and Carlo, were keen to keep the traditional winemaking customs of their parents and grandparents alive however. In 2002 they set out with the aspiration of preserving vineyards out of a passion and love for their local territory, rather than a big desire to build a large commercial winery. The company has gone from strength to strength ever since and now covers thirty hectares of vineyards within close proximity to Guagnano.