Guglierame
Liguria, ItalyGuglierame is the historic Pornassio cellar that put Ormeasco on Italian tables, the first estate in the zone to bottle the local Dolcetto under its own label in 1958. The working cellar sits inside the family's medieval castle in the Imperia hinterland, where vineyards inherited from the Marchese Scarella line a steep amphitheatre above the Arroscia valley. Since 2021 the brand has continued under the PeQ Agri group, alongside Lupi and Cascina Praiè.
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About Guglierame
Pornassio sits high in the Imperia hinterland, halfway between the Riviera and the Ligurian Alps, where the Arroscia valley narrows toward the Colle di Nava pass. It is the heartland of Ormeasco di Pornassio DOC, Liguria's only Dolcetto-based red, planted on south-facing terraces between roughly 350 and 700 metres of altitude. Guglierame's vineyards span just under two hectares at the centre of this amphitheatre, pieced together from holdings inherited from the Marchese Scarella, an ancestor of the family.
Guglierame's wine history reaches back to 1860, when Camera di Commercio records in Imperia list an ancestor selling sfuso on the city's piazza. The estate's modern chapter began in 1958 when Nicola Guglierame and his sons started bottling their own wine, an unusual early move for inland Liguria. Eredi Ing. Guglierame went on to become the first producer in the zone to bottle Ormeasco di Pornassio under its own label, and the cellar still sets the reference for the appellation.
The working cellar occupies the medieval castle that gives the family its ancestral seat, with bottling, ageing and cask storage all kept inside the old stone walls. Brothers Raffaele and Agostino Guglierame ran the estate for decades with what the local press called a culture of the wine that bordered on obsessive: vineyard pruning calibrated to the high-altitude site rather than coastal habit, hand selection of bunches before harvest, and a reluctance to use systemic vineyard chemistry. The Ormeasco Superiore Guglierame is the cellar's flagship, joined by a Sciac-trà rosato made from the same Dolcetto grape pressed off its skins.
In the glass the Ormeasco shows ruby red with a perfume that Ligurian guides keep returning to: liquorice, bitter almond, blackberry and morello cherry, with the lean, food-driven structure that makes Dolcetto behave like a mountain wine in this corner of the Riviera. Vivino tasters across more than 600 ratings cluster the descriptors around red fruit, earthy notes and a measured oaky frame. The Superiore bottling holds up across a decade and serves as the natural anchor for the cured meats and oven-baked rabbit of the Arroscia table.
In March 2021 the Guglierame brothers sold the vineyards, brand and modern cellar equipment to PeQ Agri, the Andora group that already owned Lupi and Cascina Praiè. The Pornassio holdings became part of a wider Western Liguria portfolio centred on Terrazza Praié in Colla Micheri, while Raffaele and Agostino kept the family's olive groves and continue to produce Taggiasca extra-virgin oil for their own use. The Guglierame label endures as PeQ Agri's Ormeasco line, the historic vine source that still defines the appellation's profile.
Plan your visit
Plate I · LIGURIA
Guglierame on the Liguria wine atlas
Common questions
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Guglierame's cellar and vineyards are in Pornassio, in the Imperia hinterland of Liguria. The estate sits inside a medieval castle in the village's Castello Villa quarter, roughly halfway between the western Riviera coast and the Colle di Nava pass into Piedmont.
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