Di Majo Norante

Manual selection in the Ramitello vines

At harvest, the bunches are chosen by hand from the estate vines before Alessio Di Majo, winemaker at Di Majo Norante in Campomarino, carries the decision into the cellar. His role joins ownership with the practical judgments of winegrowing, the kind that begin well before fermentation, in pruning, foliage, yield, and the refusal to let volume flatten character. The estate sits in the Campomarino countryside, in the Ramitello district north of the Gargano promontory, where loose, partly sandy soils and summer breezes give the vineyard its working conditions. Di Majo inherited the commitment to grape growing from his father, Luigi Di Majo, and the family’s wine history reaches back to the 19th century, with old cellars under the town square and in the old family building at Campomarino. At this station, tradition is not nostalgia. It is a method: southern varieties in southern ground, selected for their fit with Molise rather than trained toward a more anonymous polish.

Organic work across three tenute

The program rests on biological and organic viticulture, with the estate describing the practice as biorganic as a way of living. In the vineyards, the work favors manure and non-invasive insect repellents, while grass and flowers remain between the rows to hold a living soil for microorganisms and predator insects. The vines are managed across Tenuta Camarda at 200 meters, Tenuta Cocciolete at 100 meters, and Tenuta Ramitelli at 100 meters, a set of exposures that keeps the farming close to place rather than recipe. The estate grows its own fruit across 123 hectares, with Aglianico, Montepulciano, Sangiovese, Tintilia, Falanghina, Greco, and Moscato Reale among the varieties at the center of the work. For Sangiovese, maceration stays in contact with the skins for approximately one month before complete malolactic fermentation. The cellar uses modern technology, purified estate water for irrigation, and solar power, but the governing discipline remains selection: low yields, manual sorting, and bunches that arrive because they have earned their place.

The cellar and the countryside

The masseria keeps the pace of an agricultural estate rather than a polished tasting machine. Around it, vineyards and countryside set the scale; inside, the cellar work answers to the fruit coming from the tenute. The atmosphere is quiet, with the rustic feel of a family-run Molise property where the method is visible in the land as much as in the glass. This is a winery of red, white, rosé, sparkling, and dessert wines, but the through-line is narrower than the range suggests: preserving the Mediterranean accent of the grapes, the edges and textures that would be easier to smooth away. Ramitello and Aglianico Contado Riserva 2011 sit close to Di Majo’s signature, not as trophies, but as names that keep returning to the same question of soil, vine, and restraint at Di Majo Norante.