The history of the Apollonio family is steeped in land and passion. Their vineyard, Cantina Apollonio, exports to 36 different countries around the world, whilst maintaining the same wine production methods of its founders, augmented with optimised production process and marketing. The passion for wine is not the only passion that the Apollonio family has handed down to subsequent generations in the last two centuries. They have also cultivated a passion for art, culture and performing arts.

It all began when Tommaso Apollonio, born in 1828 in Aradeo, a charming village in Salento, a few kilometres from the sea in Gallipoli, married Domenica, the daughter of a land owner with Jewish origins. The father owned a mill in via dei Pozzi Dolci, where the newlyweds built the family’s first wine cellar. But it was their son, Noè, who sealed the family’s fate. The phylloxera epidemic forced him to diversify the variety of grapes and capitalise on the situation, by intensifying wine sales, especially of Negroamaro and Primitivo, made from grapes grown in Aradeo, Neviano and Cutrofiano. In 1904, after marrying Cesaria, a son, Marcello, was born. He truly marked the turning point for the company as it is known today.

Marcello, who apart from being passionate about wine was a theatre lover, especially revues (that’s why he often travelled all the way to Naples), bought new vineyards and set up a winery in Maglie, which he moved into. He set up similar wineries in Monteroni, Veglie and Magliano, throughout the Salento, to process not only his own grapes, but also the ones that he selected and bought from neighbouring vineyards. The aim was to produce a wine to sell to the oldest wine producing companies in Italy, who used Negramaro to strengthen the structure, taste and nose of frailer northern wines.

Marcello’s marriage with Antonietta resulted in six children, two of which, Giuseppe and Salvatore, decided to continue with the family tradition. When the father died in 1968, Giuseppe inherited the Maglie and Magliano plants, but he focused on different productions. On the other hand, Salvatore, who was born in 1938, continued the family’s wine production activities, with a more modern approach in line with current market trends. He also ensured that the company remained in family hands, when he married Liliana Ancora in 1963, and Marcello, Giorgia and Massimiliano were born.

In 1975 Salvatore, who also inherited his father’s passion for the theatre, started bottling mainly aged wines with his own label. This was the turning point for Cantina Apollonio, which started exporting its wines internationally. Some of the great wines that Salvatore produced in that period, “Ugljesa”, “Briacò” and “Sursum”, featured special labels designed by the Slavic painter Bogdan. His sudden death in 1995, a few years after his wife Liliana passed away, forced Marcello and Massimiliano, who were still very young, to take the helm of the company. Initially, they were helped by their uncle Franco, but later they were able to autonomously undertake the considerable expansion of the company. The state-of-the-art technologies that they introduced in the vinification process, as well as in storage and bottling, met with considerable success.

Today Massimiliano, current president of the Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria Association of Oenologists, and member of the Academy of Vine and Wine, is the company’s oenologist. He studied viticulture and oenology in Locorotondo (Apulia) and worked for Italian, French and Spanish companies. The Apollonio wines, 95% of which are currently sold abroad, are rooted in their land, not only in terms of vines: the “Mani del Sud” line, and the “Valle Cupa” and “Divoto”, are wines inspired by the poems of important Salento poets such as Giovanni Bernardini, Laura D'Arpe and, most importantly, the great Vittorio Bodini. The international poetry and translation award sponsored by Cantina Apollonio, dedicated to Vittorio Bodini, celebrates each year, at the end of August, this poet of the south and of its contradictions.

The artistic interests found their full and official expression in 2005 with the creation of the Apollonio Award, celebrated in the rectory of the University of Salento, with the initial contribution of Serena Dandini, and now with Neri Marcorè as artistic director (helped onstage by Luca Barbarossa). The award originated from Marcello’s and Massimiliano’s desire to honour their parents and to celebrate the people of Puglia that bring prestige to the region in show business, literature, journalism and creativity in general. The event has become, in only ten years, an unmissable presence in Puglia’s cultural panorama, and has hosted over the years guests such as Franco Battiato, Francesco De Gregori and Gianni Morandi, and awarded equally illustrious artists such as Renzo Arbore, Ennio Capasa and Ferzan Ozpetek. The director Ferzan Ozpetek’s closeness to his friends Marcello and Massimiliano resulted in him including a playful homage to the Apollonio brand in one of his films, “Magnificent presence”. He was inspired to call the company of ghostly actors in the film the “Apollonio company” when sipping one of the brothers’ wines.

From a strictly oenological point of view, the company’s current success lies in Marcello’s and Massimiliano’s ability to make wine in line with traditional vinification principles and by focusing on Salento’s traditional grapes, without neglecting the latest consumer preferences in terms of taste. This approach was recognised at Verona’s Vinitaly in 2009, where the company was awarded the Gold Medal for their “Copertino Riserva Divoto 2001”, one of its most appreciated wines.

The company’s approach features a rigorous selection of exclusively Salento grapes, mainly Negroamaro and Primitivo, in single varietal versions or blended with Malvasia Nera, Sangiovese and Montepulciano, as it has always focused on wines for aging. This is coupled with the use of state-of-the-art technologies, new products that meet the consumers’ demands, national and international marketing and a distribution network that favours direct sales to bars and restaurants. Without forgetting the company’s desire to celebrate the artistic and cultural connotations of its wines.