2022 La Villana 'Bianco Puro' Lazio IGT

Joy Kull, the Swiss-American from the East Coast, found her way to the Bolsena area of Lazio in 2013. After apprenticing with Le Coste, she ventured out on her own and created La Villana. La Villana started with just a few old vineyards and a tiny garage. The first vintage was enjoyed by Joy and Simone's wedding guests in 2016.

Today, La Villana farms nearly 5 hectares of old and new vineyards and produces roughly 30,000 bottles per year. Joy’s approach is a collection of all she’s learned plus her creative spirit- the American Dream is apparent in her immediately, as she experiments with different vine training techniques to understand what works best in the wind swept hills of Gradoli. In 2021 Joy made the decision to no longer till or plough the soils, a Biodynamic adaptation, so the soils can slowly regenerate without interruption.

The “Puro” is the fav here at Cittavino & Co. 100% old vine Procanico (Lazio’s name for Trebbiano Toscano) with 10 days of maceration, destemmed. Once the primary fermentation finishes, the wine spends 1 year in raw cement vats. Minimal intervention checklist: no fining; no filtration; no selected yeasts; no additives save for minimal sulfur- in this case it is a 0 sulfur addition. It’s certainly the more unique wine of the line up, and its amber color and layered flavors of tangerine peel, eucalyptus, vanilla essence and cedar (despite seeing no ok), make it a wine that I will return to again again because similar to Joy herself, it will always surprise you with something new.