Antonio Camillo

The vineyard before the label

Manual harvest brings Ciliegiolo to the cellar before Antonio Camillo, winemaker at Antonio Camillo in Manciano, lets indigenous yeasts begin the work. The sequence suits him. His training in the Tuscan Maremma began in the vineyards, where weather, soil, and timing taught the discipline before the label carried his name. By 2006, that field work had become a small winery under his own hand, with the practical line from vine to bottle kept short.

Camillo does not come from a winemaking family. His apprenticeship was built through more than 25 years of work in Maremma vineyards and cellars, including a period at Poggio Argentiera, before he began bottling under Antonio Camillo. The continuity matters here because the place is not arranged around spectacle. It is a producer’s winery, rural in feeling, close to Capalbio and Manciano, and concerned with native Tuscan grapes before anything else. Ciliegiolo, Procanico, Vermentino, Trebbiano, and Sangiovese form the working vocabulary. The bench is the vineyard first.

Old vines, cement, large wood

The method turns on old vineyards and native varieties. Camillo works with vines described as between 40 and 50 years old, often in long leases rather than a polished estate model. At Vallerana Alta, the vineyards sit at 350 meters on clay soils; the holding is 12 hectares, with 8 hectares for red varieties and 4 hectares for white. Those numbers do not make the wine on their own, but they give the work its scale: small enough for close attention, large enough to ask for a repeated discipline season after season.

In the cellar, fermentation relies on indigenous yeasts. Ciliegiolo is harvested by hand and fermented in stainless steel, while the broader program keeps close to cement for fermentation and large wood for aging selected wines. The approach is organic in practice, using natural products such as copper and sulfur, and avoiding synthetic chemical intervention. Camillo has chosen not to pursue formal certification. What matters in the glass is the method’s restraint: fruit brought in from local vines, handled without excess force, then allowed to settle into the shape of Maremma Toscana rather than a cellar signature laid over it.

The quiet work of the Maremma cellar

The cellar has the rural pressure of a place made for work, not performance. Cement vessels and large casks set the rhythm; the vineyard, not the tasting room, explains the room. In a winery of this size, a decision made at pruning can still be felt at fermentation, and a choice in the cellar does not have to pass through layers of distance before it reaches the bottle.

That closeness gives Antonio Camillo its character. The wines keep returning to the local varieties that built the project, especially Ciliegiolo, alongside Procanico and Vermentino. The line to follow is not a new room or a louder release, but the same hand staying with the same grapes. Tutti i Giorni Rosso, Tutti i Giorni Bianco, and Ciliegiolo Toscana IGT keep the name of the place in motion.