Emidio Pepe

The Free Bacchus Story

Emidio Pepe founded his winery in Abruzzo in 1964, using the methods his father and grandfather had used. Decades later the organic certification movement wrote down a set of standards, and his farming turned out to already meet them.

He did not convert to anything. He simply never farmed any other way, in a region then known mostly for bulk wine and big co-operatives. The estate is certified organic by CCPB, and the certificate covers the wine as well as the grapes.

The patience is the other unusual thing. The Montepulciano and Trebbiano d'Abruzzo are made in glass-lined concrete, never oak, and much of each vintage then rests in bottle for years before release. Before it goes out, every bottle more than twenty years old is opened, hand-decanted off its sediment, checked and topped up from the same vintage. Deep cellar stocks mean older vintages remain findable for anyone prepared to look, which is rarer than it sounds.

Emidio Pepe died on 28 July 2026, a day after his ninety-fourth birthday. The estate had already passed to his daughters Sofia and Daniela, supported by his granddaughters Chiara and Elisa, and had been run by them for years. Continuity here was settled well before it was tested, which is the part of a producer's record that no certificate captures.