Highlights

My ancestors were Bulgarian wool merchants who, to escape the advance of the Saracen invasion, took refuge in Italy in the town of Miglianico, in the province of Chieti around 1560. During XVIII century they became landowners. In this period the Ciavolichs provided horses to General Gioacchino Murat’s army, marshal of Napoleone Bonaparte’s Empire. In 1853 Francesco Ciavolich built in Miglianico, opposite his private residence, the first winery, nowadays one of the most ancient and suggestive in Abruzzo, where to work independently grapes that came from the surrounding lands. At the end of XIX century an important marriage marked the future path of the winery on Loreto Aprutino’s side: the one between Giuseppe Ciavolich and the noblewoman Ernestina Vicini from Loreto Aprutino....

It was the summer of 1993 and I was an architecture student in Zurich, but I could no longer find the right motivations in what I was doing. A few weeks immersed in the nature of Brancaia, my parents’ estate in Chianti, were enough to make me find my way. I returned to Switzerland with the idea of dedicating myself to wine and, to test my decision, even before enrolling in oenology school, I spent a year at the Domaine des Balisiers in Peney (Geneva), which, with its 30 hectares of vineyards, was at the time the largest organic Swiss winery. It was truly an experience of great impact for me ...