Elena Fucci

The Free Bacchus Story

Elena Fucci was a student, and by her own account one who drank Coke and knew almost nothing about wine, when her family was deciding whether to sell the vineyards around the house where she grew up. Her grandfather Generoso had bought them in the 1960s, the highest part of a vineyard at the foot of Mount Vulture. She kept them, founded the winery in 2000 and staked everything on a single wine, Titolo. The first harvest made 1,200 bottles, and she sold the rest of the grapes.

Basilicata is the instep of Italy’s boot, between the toe and the heel, and one of the country’s least-known wine regions. Its serious red is Aglianico del Vulture, grown on the volcanic soil of Mount Vulture, an extinct volcano, at around 600 metres. Aglianico ripens late and makes a dark, tannic wine; over the border in Campania, the same grape grown at Taurasi is known for needing a decade in bottle.

Much of the work is done the old way. The vines are tied with broom fibres dried over the summer. Some of the oldest are trained in the local capanno style, each freestanding vine carrying three canes that have to be repositioned by hand several times a season, and Fucci keeps them partly to keep the method alive. In 2020 she added 1.5 hectares nearby to the original six.

The EU organic register lists Elena Fucci under Sidel for both her grapes and her wine, from vineyard to export. Not every bottle comes from her own vines. SCEG is made from small old plots nearby that she took over, under her direction, before their owners, in their nineties, gave them up, and since 2022 the Verha wines have used grapes bought from neighbouring farmers. This check read her certificate, not theirs.

Titolo, from Aglianico vines 50 to 70 years old, is the flagship. SCEG, with softer tannins from a shorter time on the skins, is the easy way in.