Arnaldo Caprai

The Grape He Refused to Let Disappear

A Forty-Two-Hectare Bet on a Nearly Lost Grape

In 1971, Arnaldo Caprai, a successful Umbrian textile entrepreneur, bought forty-two hectares in Montefalco, four of them already planted with vines on the Val di Maggio estate. He wasn't chasing an easy investment. Sagrantino, the dark, tannic red grape native to the area, had all but vanished. By the early 1970s, fewer than ten hectares of it remained anywhere in the world.

Most of what little Sagrantino existed was made into a sweet, dried-grape style wine. Caprai believed the grape could do more, that it had the structure and character to produce a serious, age-worthy dry red. That conviction, and the decades of work behind it, is what put Montefalco on the map as one of Italy's most distinctive wine regions.

A Family Legacy

Marco Caprai Carries the Work Forward

In 1986, Arnaldo's son Marco took over the estate and pushed the research further. He partnered with the University of Milan on a long-running clonal selection project, studying which strains of Sagrantino ripened most evenly and which training systems could tame the grape's famously powerful tannins without losing its character.

The results spoke for themselves. In the early 1990s, the estate's Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG "25 Anni" caught the attention of critics internationally, and in 1993 the winery earned Gambero Rosso's Tre Bicchieri, Italy's highest wine accolade. Arnaldo Caprai's own contribution to Italian agriculture was formally recognized in 2002, when he was named Cavaliere del Lavoro, Knight of Labour, for Agricultural Merit.

Today the estate farms 160 hectares across all four points of the Montefalco DOCG, still centered on Sagrantino and the native white grape Grechetto, alongside Sangiovese, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon. What began as one family's bet on a nearly forgotten grape is now widely regarded as the estate most responsible for Sagrantino's reputation on the world stage.