Mottura Sergio

Sergio Mottura farms thirty-seven hectares of organic vines, around 50 football pitches, above Civitella d'Agliano. The estate sits in the Tuscia hills of northern Lazio, facing Lake Bolsena and the Umbrian border. The family has farmed the same land since 1933. This is the producer that brought Grechetto back as a serious dry white. It began with the cult Latour a Civitella, the first white wine from Lazio ever to win Tre Bicchieri in the Gambero Rosso guide. Tastings now run from the seventeenth-century tuff cellar below the village. There Giuseppe Mottura, the current mayor of nearby Orvieto, ages the sparkling and still wines.

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Barrels stacked in the stone cellar at Mottura

Wines from Mottura Sergio

Civitella d'Agliano IGT Grechetto Poggio della Costa Sergio Mottura

Civitella d'Agliano IGT Grechetto Poggio della Costa Sergio Mottura

Civitella d'Agliano

1 retailer

£21.10

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Sergio Mottura Poggio della Costa

Sergio Mottura Poggio della Costa

Appellation TBD

1 retailer

£17.88

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About Mottura Sergio

Alessandro Mottura, a civil engineer from Piedmont, bought the Civitella d'Agliano estate in 1933 as farmland. Three decades later his son Sergio, then twenty-one, moved south from Turin to take it over. The holding was still split into twenty-one mezzadrie sharecropping plots. The first modern vineyard went in at Ombrico in 1968. It was planted with Grechetto cuttings taken from the family's own old married vines. The single-vineyard Poggio della Costa was carved out two years later.

Sergio's bet on Grechetto ran against the grain. The grape was widely treated as a blending workhorse for Orvieto. Almost no one in central Italy made it as a single-variety white built to age. He persisted for a quarter of a century before international recognition arrived. In 1994 the family filled their first five barriques, branded Louis Latour, with vintage Grechetto. The wine that emerged took the name Latour a Civitella. The 2004 Italian Wines guide from Gambero Rosso and Slow Food awarded it Tre Bicchieri, the first white wine from Lazio ever to receive the rating. In 2012 the same guide named Sergio its Winemaker of the Year.

The estate began converting to organic farming in 1991, under the new EU rules, and was certified in 1996. That made Sergio Mottura one of the earliest such producers in Lazio. The work has not stood still. Grass cover left to grow on its own replaced tilling on the rows, and chemical fertilisers were dropped. In 2018 chestnut tannin began standing in for copper-based fungicides against downy mildew. Solar panels now power the modern winery, and wastewater is treated in a planted evaporation bed.

Production splits between two sites four kilometres apart. The 1998 winemaking cellar on Strada Ombricolo sits among the working vineyards. It has a 2,500 hectolitre capacity, about 330,000 bottles' worth, for fermentation, packaging and storage. The historic seventeenth-century cellar in the centre of Civitella d'Agliano is cut into the tuff bedrock, at a constant 12 degrees Celsius. There the still wines refine in barrel and steel, and the classic-method sparkling wine rests on the lees. Above the caves, in the same medieval building, the family runs the small Tana dell'Istrice farm-stay and the tasting rooms.

The range starts with three wines that are 100 percent Grechetto: Poggio della Costa, Latour a Civitella and the late-harvest Muffo. Then come the Orvieto DOC and Tragugnano, blends with Procanico. The Spumante Sergio Mottura has been bottled by the classic method since 1984. The Civitella d'Agliano IGT reds are Civitella Rosso, Syracide, Nenfro and Magone. Giuseppe Mottura now leads the cellar. Visitors taste a five-wine flight in the tuff caves, served with the family's homemade white pizza.

Editorial · ItalianWines.co.uk

Plate I · LAZIO

Mottura Sergio on the Lazio wine atlas

Anchored in Tuscia and Lake Bolsena, the editorial heart of Lazio.

Strada Ombricolo, snc, 01020 Civitella d'Agliano, Viterbo (Lazio)
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Visit & Experiences

1 bookable experience at Mottura Sergio

1 tasting, checked by our editors. From €28.

Five-wine tasting in the tuff cellar at Mottura Sergio Tasting & Tour

Five-wine tasting in the tuff cellar

About 2 hours €28 per person

Two-hour guided tasting in the seventeenth-century cellar carved into the tuff under the historic centre of Civitella d'Agliano. Five wines are poured from the family's range, including the Spumante Brut Nature Sergio Mottura, the Orvieto Tragugnano, the Grechettos Poggio della Costa and Latour a Civitella, and the Nenfro Montepulciano. Homemade white pizza is served alongside.

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sergiomottura.com/
Strada Ombricolo, snc, 01020 Civitella d'Agliano, Viterbo (Lazio)
+39 0761914533
[email protected]

Common questions

  • Sergio Mottura is in Civitella d'Agliano, a medieval hill village in the province of Viterbo, at the northern edge of Lazio. The village sits between the Calanchi Valley of Tuscia and the Tiber river plain that borders Umbria. The vineyards face Lake Bolsena to the north-west.
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