Monastero Suore Cistercensi - 2021 Coenobium

How do you begin to describe a wine that is guided to the glass by angels? The “Nun” wine as our customers love to call it, has enchanted the palates of many. Soft, tea like, glamorous.

Led by Adriana and Fabiola, this convent of over 80 Cistercian nuns has been organically farming their five hectares of vines in Vitorchiano, Lazio, since the early nineties, but it wasn’t until Giampiero Bea began advising them in the early 2000’s that their wines gained a larger audience. Even before Giampiero began helping them gently refine their approach and commercialise their wines, they were making frank, as-is wines produced with almost no technology. In a region rife with highly controlled, highly sulfured concoctions, here was a wine of real character, an unadorned expression of healthy grapes grown in a fascinating volcanic-soiled terroir. Bring it Lazio! The winery is nothing more than a toolshed packed to the gills with old steel tanks, fibreglass containers of various sizes, and glass demijohns tucked here and there—proving yet again that it takes the barest minimum to produce a wine of character and truth.