The proper way to think about Cantina Matrone’s wines revealed itself the instant we sat down to a massive lunch, a picnic of Neapolitan treats prepared by his mother, Dana. Almost all of the forms were immediately apparent to New Yorkers – classic – como si dice – “Red-Sauce Italian”. Sun dried tomatoes freed from their 90s salad boom, mozzarella (two kinds!), fried eggplant dusted with parmesan, homemade bread, olive oil, etc. It was exactly what you’d expect, but somehow, better than you could ever imagine; the kind of lunch that makes you want to start again from first principles. The wines of Cantina Matrone are similar. There’s no gimmick here, just stunningly elegant natural wines from Campagna that taste like the original platonic form of the thing you've been trying to find for years. They’re good in a way that should be apparent to anyone with a mouth, but wonderful in a way that’s apparent to anyone with a palate, and we couldn’t be happier to share them with you all.


Obviously, Andrea Matrone, the vignaiolo behind Cantina Matrone on Mount Vesuvius, is not reinventing the wheel. There’s been wine here, for, basically, as long as there’s been wine on the Italian peninsula, but these days, there’s not much left. There’s only 100 ha under vine (although 200 ha claimed for “tax purposes”, which is very on brand for the appellation closest to Napoli) with about 7 producers working the volcano. Most of them, Andrea Matrone tells us, make their money not from wine, but from the tour buses bringing loads of tourists up for the views of the bay, Pompeii, and all the splendor of Napoli splayed out below. It’s good money, but “tourism ruins your focus,” so Andrea has a strict “no bus” policy for visitors, which means, frankly, that the wines succeed or fail on their own merits. This requires an absolute ton of discipline, mind you, because both of Andrea’s vineyards are pretty ideally situated to stare out into the distance on.



More than the view, it’s the soil that demands attention at Cantina Matrone, all 4.5 ha of it. In geologic terms, it’s brand new – one vineyard bears materiel from the 1944 eruption, while his more venerable and larger vineyard was formed from the 1906 eruption. This vineyard wasn’t given a light dusting of ash, but was profoundly shaped and molded by the volcano, which deposited several meters of iron-rich volcanic debris over it and completely re-wrote the topography. The earth is black and friable and dotted with meter wide holes where geologic features used to exist – deep pits marking where hillocks or boulders were before geology became kinetic. In these pits, Andrea and his assistant, Ali, an immigrant from Burkina Faso, have planted tiny vineyard-vivariums: just a few vines worth of experiments to see what they can get away with. Unofficially, we can confirm that Nerello Mascalese grows pretty well 7 feet below the surface.


Officially, we can say that his surface layer vineyards are given over to organically grown Caprettone, Piedirosso, Falanghina, Greco and a tiny bit of Aglianico. “The red varieties here are more sensitive, “ Andrea told us, noting that is why he takes so much pride in their cultivation. The vines are trained according to the soil types - on the rockiest soils, Andrea favors bush vines, while those with more to cling to get trained in a strange high guyot – a necessity as in the vineyard in question was trained by a previous owner to high production pergolas. The vines themselves are a mix of grafted and ungrafted. Andrea prefers grafted as they need less water, but notes the ungrafted varieties taste more intense. In general, he reports, with their deep roots, his vines have little to fear from the dry years, but the last few vintages, marked by rain, have been difficult. 2023, especially, was brutally wet and Andrea lost nearly everything. Since then, he’s been spraying more copper, sulfur, clay and algae than he likes, but is resolutely against turning towards systemics or anything detrimental to vineyard health and intends to bring his spray schedule back to pre-deluge levels by 2026. While the path is hard, he’s from a family of green thumb fanatics, most notably his father, who has transformed the family home’s courtyard into a garden of exquisite citrus from around the world.





In addition to his intensive green thumb training, Andrea studied agronomy at the University of Florence and spent years working abroad as a winemaker. Most of Andrea’s stints were with industrial wineries –time in New Zealand, Australia, France and the US (at Cakebread Cellars of all places) and these, he told us, showed us what he didn’t want in wine. Everywhere he went, he found, the wines tasted exactly the same – including wine that he, himself, had made. From there, Andrea decided to come home, revive a now quite defunct family winery and try to make wine that tasted like something real. It was about this time when Andrea began to study studio arts, a discipline in which he proved himself quite prolific and which he gleefully allows to permeate his winemaking. His paintings grace his labels, his tiny cantina nestled in his vineyard and the cellar itself, where easels are nestled between fermentation vessels and where bright colors and bold lines break up the monotony of what is often a utilitarian space. The wines, he tells us, don’t really care about the art, but he likes it, which is more important.

Like his art, Andrea’s cellar work is both simple and experimental. Rare for the region, all of his ferments are native – the vast majority are just simply spontaneous but for difficult wines, he creates a pied du cuve each year. Fermentation occurs in either steel or plastic bin, which he is a pioneer in the use of in Campania. Each cuvee is co-fermented, rather than assembled at the end, the better, he tells us, to incorporate the spirit of the whole. The whites see some skin contact - just a day or two for texture, while his reds often have ample portions of whole berry inclusion.



Originally, Andrea was more gung-ho on skin contact but found that, often, it too erased a bit of the terroir, so he’s dialed it back since 2018. Similarly, he’s come back around on light SO2 use - after early vintages wrestling with soil PH and latent instability, Andrea now utilizes a small sulfur addition prior to bottling. Due to Matrone’s long elevage, there’s ample opportunities for racking, so the wines are never fined. However, in rainy vintages, Andrea finds the whites, especially, remain turbid, so he will occasionally lightly filter before bottling. As an additional step for stability, all of Andrea’s wines spend an additional 6 months to a year in bottle, resting horizontally, before release. We’ve found the wines to be immediately exuberant and lovely out of the bottle, but to evolve and develop wonderfully with air, either with a meal or even for several days.