Sergio Mottura works thirty-seven hectares of organic vineyards above Civitella d'Agliano, in the Tuscia hills of northern Lazio that face Lake Bolsena and the Umbrian border. The estate has farmed the same land since 1933 and is the producer that re-established Grechetto as a serious dry white, beginning 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, where Giuseppe Mottura, current mayor of nearby Orvieto, ages the spumante and the still wines on the lees.
Lazio
Bookable experiences, curated by our editors. External booking where marked.
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.
Book this experienceTwo-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.
Book this experienceAlessandro Mottura, a civil engineer from Piedmont, bought the Civitella d'Agliano estate in 1933 as agricultural land. Three decades later his son Sergio, then twenty-one, moved south from Turin to take it over and inherited a holding still organised around twenty-one mezzadrie sharecropping plots. The first modern vineyard went in at Ombrico in 1968, planted to Grechetto cuttings selected from the family's own old married vines, and the Poggio della Costa cru was carved out two years later.
Sergio's bet on Grechetto was a contrarian one. The grape was widely treated as a blending workhorse for Orvieto, and almost no one in central Italy was producing it as a single-variety, age-worthy white. 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, and 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 Sergio was named Winemaker of the Year by the same guide.
The estate began converting to organic agriculture in 1991 under the new EU regulation and was certified in 1996, making Sergio Mottura one of the earliest organic producers in Lazio. The conversion has not stood still. Spontaneous grassing replaced soil tillage on the rows, chemical fertilisers were dropped, and in 2018 chestnut tannin began standing in for copper-based fungicides against downy mildew. A photovoltaic array now powers the modern winery, and wastewater is treated through a phyto-evapotranspiration bed.
Production is split between two sites four kilometres apart. The 1998 vinification cellar on Strada Ombricolo holds 2,500 hectolitres of capacity for fermentation, packaging and storage, and sits among the working vineyards. The historic seventeenth-century cellar in the centre of Civitella d'Agliano, set into the tuff bedrock at a constant 12 degrees Celsius, is where the still wines refine in barriques and steel and the classic-method spumante rests on the lees. Above the caves, in the same medieval building, the family runs the small Tana dell'Istrice agriturismo and the rooms used for tastings.
The current portfolio runs from the 100 percent Grechetto crus, Poggio della Costa, Latour a Civitella and the late-harvest Muffo, through the Orvieto DOC and Tragugnano blends with Procanico, the Spumante Sergio Mottura that has been bottled by classic method since 1984, and the Civitella d'Agliano IGT reds Civitella Rosso, Syracide, Nenfro and Magone. Giuseppe Mottura now leads the cellar, and visiting guests taste a five-wine flight in the tuff caves alongside the family's homemade white pizza.
Editorially verified by ItalianWines.co.uk.
Plate I · LAZIO
Est. 1933 
2 wines 
Tastings
Tours
Accommodation
Booking required 
