Augusta Bargilli

The landscape of Colli Orientali del Friuli (which translates to the Eastern Hills of Friuli) is a breathtaking mosaic of rolling hills, terraced vineyards, and historic villages, nestled in the northeastern corner of Italy near the Slovenian border. Its sundrenched vineyards are part of Friuli-Venezia Giulia wine region, famous for its native grapes Friulano, Ribolla Gialla, and Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso.

These rare grapes, along with more recent interlopers like Chardonnay and Merlot, and the Ponca soil, a unique mix of marl and sandstone, they grow in form the artistic medium of winemaker Augusta Bargilli.

Augusta began making wine in 2018 after a career in the theater, cinema and figurative art. Unlike abstract art, which emphasizes shapes, colors, and forms without direct reference to reality, figurative art is rooted in representation.

Her artistic past informs every aspect of her winemaking. She describes her method in the vineyard as conscious viticulture, an organic hands-on approach which includes year-round maintenance and manual harvest. In the cellar, her purpose is to intervene 'in subtraction', like the artist on a block of marble, the bare minimum necessary to accompany her grapes metamorphosis into wine.

Like Proust’s petite madeleine, Augusta sees her wines as expressions of place, memory, and emotion, but also beauty. Augusta sums up her philosophy of winemaking with the blended French and Italian phrase, “À la recherche du temps perdu e della Bellezza” or “In search of lost time and beauty.”