Now the estate is run by Giampaolo’s daughter Teresa, an art historian like her uncle, but also a keen farmer who divides her time between her studies and running the estate together with her husband Giacomo de Pace, in the hope that one day one of their three teenage sons will take over, because for centuries the hills of Gramogliano have been renowned, like Rosazzo and Rocca Bernarda, not just for their natural beauty, but also for the terrain, the position and the micro-climate that make up the cru hors classe of Friuli’s Colli Orientali.
The Estate and its history
When in the eighteenth century French wine species were all the fashion, it was thanks to the Perusini family that a number of traditional Friuli strains were preserved, such as Picolit, rediscovered in the nineteenth century by Giacomo Perusinigrandfather of the present owner), who was responsible for its selection and planting in the Colli Orientali (Eastern Hills) area of Friuli, following in the footsteps of the pioneering work carried out in the eighteenth century by Count Fabio Asquini.
Giacomo Perusini, a sage and enthusiastic vine-grower, combined research into writings on wine with the running of the estate till his premature death in the First World War. His wife Giuseppina, a painter and writer as well as being a canny businesswoman who lived to be more than a hundred years old, continued his work and relaunched Friuli wines on the Italian market and abroad.
Her son Gaetano, who graduated in agriculture like his father as well as obtaining a degree in letters, continued studying traditional methods of agriculture, and as Professor of Popular Arts and Traditions at the University of Trieste carried out radical research into land reform and vine-growing in Friuli.
The other son Giampaolo worked on improving Ribolla Gialla, another vine species native to Friuli.
Since then, although Rocca Bernarda, the old family seat, has passed to the Order of Malta, the family tradition has been continued in the part of the estate on the hills of Gramogliano bounded by the Judrio River, which marked the frontier between Italy and Austria up till 1918.