My story begins in Olevano Romano, in a vineyard surrounded by woods. Since I was a child, I have experienced the countryside as an expanse of rows where every single clod was covered with vineyards. My family's company extended over almost 5 hectares, all under sapling vines...
With a passionate voice, Marco Antonelli, owner of the renowned winery named after him, reveals his personal epic and the profound love he has for the art of viticulture:
A lot of effort in the vineyard! Only manual work, repeated endlessly, administered life by life. Pruning, trimming, tying... Under the scorching sun and the winter frost I saw the profiles of my parents among the rows, with their skin burnt by the sun or whipped by the biting wind, in a surreal silence broken only by the bleating of the flocks around the shepherd.
Often, at dawn, I went to visit him with a flask of red Cesanese under my arm, I warmed myself by his fire, ate something from the pot, exchanging the wine for the ricotta. I lived in the countryside and with the countryside.
I was happy while I followed my parents , I absentmindedly listened to their lessons as they "combed" the vines with expert hands, I hunted insects, I ran away from snakes... but I also felt the melancholy, the silence and the fatigue of that job. I have clear memories of myself at 7 years old, actually more attracted by the echo of the songs coming from the valley that broke that silence...
Today my father died, my mother is old, the pastor was already in the twilight then. I return to the countryside and look around, noticing that there are only a few of us left to cultivate those vineyards. The vineyards of that time died out together with their owners who, despite all the love and passion, were unable to pass on that culture and that choice of life to their children.
But I am here, and like me a few others: with the same love as always we continue to produce Cesanese di Olevano Romano.
Marco Antonelli
