The Masciarelli winery was founded in 1981 by Gianni Masciarelli, who, with his intuition and entrepreneurial dedication, became a symbol of Italian wine and a key protagonist in the rise of modern winemaking in the Abruzzo region. The heart of the winery is located in the village of San Martino in the province of Chieti, and the vineyards and olive groves are spread across all four provinces of the Abruzzo region. Gianni Masciarelli inherited his passion for vineyards and wine from his grandfather Umberto and began experimenting with grapes at a young age, driven by a great dream—to elevate wines made from native varieties from Abruzzo to a global level while giving them an international style and retaining the character of the region. He was the first producer to introduce the “guyot” vine cultivating system in Abruzzo and used French oak barriques for aging Montepulciano and Trebbiano wines.
At just 20 years old, his enlightening experience was attending the harvest in the Champagne region of France, which had a significant influence on the direction he would take. In 1981, he established the company and began producing and selling wines from Trebbiano and Montepulciano varieties. By 1983, he was producing 9,000 bottles annually. In 1984, he created the Villa Gemma Rosso for the first time—a wine made from the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo variety from San Martino, with which Gianni defined a new concept for producing wine from this variety and found his style. He constantly studied new vine cultivation techniques and learned about the specifics of Abruzzo, selecting older vineyards that yielded lower quantities. He was obsessed with his “two cellars”—the first being the actual cellar located in the winery where the wine aged, and the second, the most important, located under the open sky, which was the vineyard where the wine originated. In 1987, Gianni met Marina Cvetić, leading to an unbreakable professional and emotional bond that gave the company an international character and allowed for even faster advancement and expansion of the story about wines from Abruzzo. After Gianni’s death in 2008, the company is run by his wife, Marina Cvetić, and his eldest daughter, Miriam Lee Masciarelli, who continue to produce wines that have made the Abruzzo region famous on the global wine scene. In recent years, under their leadership, production and sales have increased, high-quality olive oil and grape production have been launched, and the 17th-century Castello di Semivicoli has been converted into a hotel, becoming a center for regional wine tourism. The company is strongly committed to gender equality, with women’s participation in the workforce reaching 54%.