Cantine Ortali

Steel before oak

The steel does the quiet work at Cantine Ortali, where Fabio Mecca, winemaker, guides the cellar in Ortali, Galluccio, Italy. His decision is not to build a wine around barrel, but to keep Falanghina and Aglianico close to the fruit, the volcanic ground, and the food of the house. Mecca trained at Università degli Studi di Padova and works across several Italian cellars as consulente enologico, including Fattoria Montereggi, Fratelli Dragone and Tenuta dei Baroni Capoano since 2017, and Cantine Bonaparte, Poderi la Fenice and Fattoria di Gratena since 2018. At Ortali, his station is young. The winery began in 2023, not as a dynastic estate but as the project of friends who placed an agriturismo and a small cellar into the countryside near Galluccio. The lineage here is not a family name handed down through generations. It is a set of decisions, the steel tank, the extraction, the tannin, the insistence that a first vintage can still speak plainly when the place is strong enough.

Five hectares under Roccamonfina

The vineyards sit on 5 hectares in the woods around Roccamonfina, an extinct volcano whose slopes give the wines their mineral edge and their local accent. Cantine Ortali works within Galluccio DOC, with Falanghina, Aglianico and Montepulciano as the central materials. The house has made its name on Falanghina Cavelle Galluccio DOC and Aglianico Campano Campania IGT, both from the 2023 harvest and both handled in steel. That choice matters. Steel keeps the cellar from adding sweetness, toast or borrowed structure, leaving Mecca to work through timing, extraction and blending. In the Aglianico, a small addition of Montepulciano softens the tannin and moves the wine toward the table rather than the trophy shelf. The annual production is 25,000 bottles, a scale that keeps the work close to the hands. Nothing here asks the barrel to provide a shortcut. The method is freshness, contact with the volcanic soil, and enough restraint to let the glass stay useful beside food.

The cellar beside the country house

The cellar belongs to a wider rhythm of country hospitality. Cantine Ortali is also a Country House, with an agriturismo setting among greenery at the foot of Roccamonfina, and the room carries that rural tempo into the tasting. The atmosphere is warm and conversational rather than ceremonial. The vineyard, the kitchen and the glass stay in sight of one another, which suits wines built for salumi, cheeses, parmigiana di melanzane and the local table. The place is small, scenic and hidden enough to feel found rather than presented. In the tasting room, the craft is not separated from the farm around it. Falanghina Cavelle Galluccio DOC has to stand beside the food, the woods and the volcanic ground that made it.