Giovanni arrived in the U.S. with a suitcase the size of a laptop, everything else was part of the earthquake rubble in Santo Stefano del Sole—Giovanni Petretta’s hometown in southern Italy. “Everything else,” included the family winery.
The Petretta family was one of the founding families of Santo Stefano del Sole, dating back to 1525. Their connection to the land runs deep, just as the grapevines their family tended for six generations.
But everything changed after the devastating 1980 earthquake. For years, the Petretta family craft of old world winemaking lay unused as Giovanni, his mother, and brother tackled a new language and a new culture. Within this new land settled in and began a new life.
Life there was hectic. Giovanni missed the traditions of his homeland. He wanted to bring something from his old world into the new, something that could reconnect him to the land he still loved.
So Giovanni started in the basement of the home in which he lived with his wife and three children, purchasing the right grapes and using the old methods that had been shaped by his family for generations.
That first year, the Petrettas invited friends to help in the winemaking process. Each year the group of friends grew, as did the amount of wine he produced. Giovanni soon realized he had created something special, something that connected him to his past and connected him more deeply to his adopted community. Santo Stefano Winemaking was born.
Santo Stefano Winemaking has now been reborn as Casa Petretta Cellars, a boutique winery that continues the same old-world winemaking traditions established so many years ago in Italy.
While Casa Petretta Cellars produces wine with sulfites as a preservative, they can also produce the same excellent wines without sulfites.
Casa Petretta Cellars is one family’s way to embrace their unique heritage and for the rest of us to embrace our own.
Wine from Casa Petretta Cellars is a celebration of the past and the present, the young and the old, the old world and the new. Salute!