Il Torchio

Among the gentle slopes that descend to the plain of Luni, in Castelnuovo Magra, where the village houses and the Bishop’s Palace overlook the vineyards. There’s a Torchio, an olive press machine that Luigi Tendola used in his olive oil business, where all the olive growers of the area used to go and get their oil ready. Although there was a wine production for own consumption and for the nearby taverns, when the son Giorgio took over, with his “weight” and his ideas, he decided to take seriously the activity of winemaker and start bottling their own wines. Today the winery bears the name “Il Torchio” to identify a tradition , a status that was . Its vineyards, a few hectares arranged radially inside a basin that descends steeply to the valley ever, are exposed to the south, halfway up, with the Adriatic sea in the background. Only a small portion are higher, just below the village of Castelnuovo, surrounded by woods, in a lieu- dit called Linero . Current production is around 50,000 bottles which are divided among the mainly Vermentino dei Colli di Luni , Colli di Luni Red and White Table Linero.

Vocation – Winemaking is a vocation and by all means cannot be bought or planned, it can slowly grow or simply just erupt as you either have it or not. If you have it, winemaking becomes passion, if you don’t it becomes work. Surely this isn’t questionable at Il Torchio where Gilda and her brother Edoardo, representing the fourth generation, took over the winery with all its responsibilities, difficulties and hard work, when they were respectively 26 and 18.