Valentina Passalacqua

Apricena, in the province of Foggia on the northern Puglian coast, inside Gargano National Park. The family has owned the land since the early 1900s - grazing and transhumance land originally, then, from the 1970s, quarried for Biancone di Apricena marble after Valentina's father discovered the deposit. Valentina set up the winery in its current form after returning from a legal career in London around 2008. Around 48 hectares of vine sit on Kimmeridgian limestone at roughly 200 metres, organic-certified since 1999. The grapes are the local set: Fiano Minutolo, Falanghina, Bombino Bianco, Pampanuto, and Nero di Troia, plus Primitivo, Negroamaro and a little Montepulciano.

The style is the reason to care about her. Whites are linear, saline, chalky-cut on Kimmeridgian - skin-contact Falanghina in particular - and the reds are lighter-framed than the Puglian stereotype: carbonic or partial-carbonic Primitivo served cold, crunchy Nero di Troia, low extraction. The range is split across three labels: Calcarius (the one-litre Nù Litr bianco / orange / rosso / rosato line, the natural entry point), the estate-tier Valentina Passalacqua, and 9 is Enough.

The harder part. On 1 July 2020 Italian police arrested Valentina's father, Settimio Passalacqua, on charges of illegal labour intermediation and exploitation (caporalato) plus workplace-safety violations, for the treatment of migrant workers across the family's agricultural businesses. Valentina herself was never charged or under investigation, but her winery was placed under judicial oversight as one of the entities named in the case. The Tribunale di Foggia revoked the oversight in late June 2021 after auditors confirmed labour-law compliance; her father's own criminal-trial outcome is not in English-language sources.

Some US importers dropped her in 2020 - Zev Rovine, Jenny & François, Dry Farm Wines - with carefully worded statements noting that no wrongdoing by Valentina herself had been established, while citing the wider pattern. Vine Street Imports took her on for the US in May 2021. The case is still part of any honest conversation about her wines, and naming that is more useful than quietly drinking around it.