Oasi degli Angeli is a small Casolanetti family estate in Cupra Marittima, on the southern Marche coast, where Marco Casolanetti and Eleonora Rossi farm Montepulciano and a rare local biotype of Grenache called Bordo in the southern Piceno hills. The cellar makes only two reds, both bottled as Marche IGT, and both built around very old vines, severe yields, and long ageing in new French barrique. Kurni, first released in 1997 from a parcel of centenarian Montepulciano, is the wine that put this corner of Le Piceno on the global collector map.
Marche
Marco Casolanetti is the fifth generation of his family to work the land at Contrada Sant'Egidio, a few kilometres inland from the Adriatic at Cupra Marittima. He took over the property with Eleonora Rossi in the mid-1990s, replanted plots that had previously fed a local orzo-pasta tradition, and rebuilt the focus around the two grapes the family had always kept in the corners of the estate: Montepulciano and the local Grenache biotype known as Bordo.
The first Kurni was bottled in 1997. Pulled from a single block of centenarian Montepulciano planted at densities up to 50,000 vines per hectare, with severe pruning and crop thinning, the fruit ferments naturally in large 2,500 and 3,000 litre Grenier oak casks. The wine then spends two passes in 100% new French barrique, often around 22 to 24 months in total, before bottling unfined and unfiltered. The result is a Marche IGT red that critics like Eric Guido at Vinous have grouped with Italy's most concentrated wines, and that has scored 100 points at Falstaff in recent vintages.
The estate's second wine, Kupra, comes from a 1.5 hectare vineyard at Ripatransone planted to 100 year old Bordo vines on south-facing rocky soil at around 350 metres altitude. The fruit ferments in cement-egg tanks without temperature control, then ages for 32 months in barrique. Production hovers near 500 bottles a vintage, which is one reason Kupra is treated as one of Italy's rarest single-grape Grenaches and why release prices climb well above EUR 200 a bottle.
Casolanetti works the cellar with an engineer's discipline and a non-interventionist hand: no additions during fermentation, sulphur only just before bottling, and long ageing on lees in new oak before the first racking. The estate does not carry organic or biodynamic certification, but Vinous and importer Field Blend Selections both describe the farming as natural in practice. Output stays small by design and both reds sit only under the regional Marche IGT rather than Rosso Piceno DOC or Offida DOCG.
There is no public tasting room and no online booking. The two reds reach the UK through specialist allocation merchants, where each new vintage of Kurni is one of the most fought-over Italian releases of the year.
Plate I · MARCHE
Azienda Agricola Oasi degli Angeli's current bottle selection is easiest to understand through Montepulciano.
1 wine 
Tastings
Tours
Accommodation
Walk-ins welcome 
