MONTE VIBIANO VECCHIO WINERY Umbria Italy Tour – World’s First Carbon Neutral Vineyard

MONTE VIBIANO VECCHIO WINERY Umbria Italy Tour – World’s First Carbon Neutral Vineyard -- award-winning wines, tour and tasting room

Seattle transplant to Umbria Colleen Simpson takes a great deal of pride in the tour of Monte Vibiano Vecchio Winery that she and her husband Tom offer gratis to all guests of Antica Vetreria.  You too can go on this tour whether or not you stay at their B&B.  She says that her guests get the tour for free, because it was her idea to create such a tour in the first place. 

Simpson also says that as the daughter of a Lakota Sioux  father who inculcated the value of all decisions needing to be good for seven generations, she found a kindred spirit in Monte Vibiano’s late Count Andrea, and later with his adult children Countess Maria Camilla and her brother Count Lorenzo.  The late Count wanted to be known as “a man who planted trees”.  There are now about 2500 on this land, not only producing olives but also cleansing the air.

Though Seattle-sized Perugia is only twenty minutes away, the olive trees and vineyards on this land are never exposed to car pollution.  You do not drive in your car to visit the Castle or its vineyards. Instead, you park below and take an electric jeep up to the castle winery.

From this touch, to the materials used to build the winery and tasting room and beyond, Countess Camilla and her brother Count Lorenzo continue as eco-friendly stewards of the land, ensuring only sustainable products are used and following Rudolf Steiner’s regimens for biodynamic viticulture.

Your first stop on the castle grounds is a walled vineyard that is attributed to a mother’s thank you to the God Bacchus for sparing her sons in the Battle of Trasimeno where more than 15,000 Romans died, and 5000 more were enslaved by Hannibal’s forces. Colleen and her husband Tom Webb are proud to be the first owners of a vine in this walled garden.Their vine contributed to wine that they first got to taste three years ago.

From the vineyard you then go to the Castle’s high tech cellars, watch a film about how Count Lorenzo sourced a beyond super-sized wine bottle collaborating with glass makers, and then get a chance to sip the wines and taste the olive oil.

Monte Vibrano Vecchio Winery Has an Online Store

Colleen and Tom, members of the vineyard’s frequent buyer discount club, are perhaps even more keen on the olive oil.  They each consume 12 milliliters daily for the health boost of the olive oil’s polyphenols.  They also note with great pride that their friend Count Lorenzo was the innovator of selling Monte Vibiano Vecchio’s small olive oil bottles to the airlines in frozen form, and that this has also allowed the company to sell olive oil worldwide.

From this writer/photographer team’s perspective however, though the olive oil is tasty, the wine is the real star.  You get to sample several varieties—from the vineyard’s wine competition award-winners, to the more moderately priced every day vintages.

In the coming months Monte Vibiano Vecchio Winery is streamlining their online store to allow foreigners to more easily place orders and get frequent buyers’ discounts.