Grapes, vines, wine: they have always been part of me. But growing up surrounded by them is one thing, really starting to explore them is another. And that exploration, which began just a few months before this site came into being, would take me right inside a world I did not know: Peruvian wine.
It was the spring of 2024. The tickets for Peru were already in my pocket, and in exactly those months something was happening to me: wine had stopped being a bottle on the table and had become a curiosity that would not let go of me. My first Syrahs from the Rhône, Hermitage, the game of working out why two Chardonnays can seem like two different drinks. My palate was opening up and the destination was already fixed. Two things that met without my looking for them.
The first trip, and the wrong kind of curiosity
August 2024: Lima, Cusco, and one fixed idea in my head: to see Pisco, the town that gives its name to the famous Peruvian spirit. In the end I never made it to Pisco. But something more interesting happened: I realised it wasn't the spirit calling me. It was the wine, and before that the grape. And Peruvian wine has a heart that almost nobody can name: Ica.
I came home with a promise (I'll be back) and a question. And here comes the part that got me.
But why can't you find anything about this place?
I started studying. It was in those very months, in November 2024, that this site was born too, MyWineRepository, my tasting diary. And the more I looked, the more annoyed I got (in a good way): on Peruvian wine, and on Ica in particular, there was almost nothing to be found, especially in Italian. A region with five hundred years of wine history (the first in South America, no small detail) and an almost total silence.
Just think about it. The first vine on the continent planted in 1540, the birthplace of pisco, grapes and vines that survived diseases which wiped out everything in Europe… and on our shelves, nothing. That is where curiosity turned into something else: the question that would later become a book.
The return, this time with a palate
September 2025: we got married. And the trip back to Peru also became our honeymoon. Only this time Ica was not a curiosity: it was a demand. I had a whole year of tastings behind me, and I wanted to understand with my tongue what I had read in books.
The desert (and the moment it all made sense)
January 2026. We set off at dawn with friends. First Paracas and the coast, then the oasis among the dunes, and on towards the desert. In the evening, Ica, among small wine shops that look as though they come from another age. And the next morning, Tacama.
That is where it happened. I stopped in front of the vines: on one side the Andes, on the other the desert, and in between rows that should not exist. The sheer scale astonishes you and silences you. I took home a Sauvignon Blanc from Tacama. And something that would not fit in my suitcase.
This gave rise to the book
In the months that followed came Proposta Vini in Florence, ProWein in Düsseldorf, Vinitaly in Verona. Wines, stands, tastings, wonderful people. And me with Ica still on my mind, refusing to leave.
So I put two and two together: all those emotions, those flavours, and all the research I had done to fill a silence could become one single thing. A book. I wrote it together with Edith, my wife, and it is called The Forgotten Wine.
Inside is everything I would have liked to find myself when I started looking: the arrival of the vine with the conquistadors, the puquios that carry water beneath the sand, the Quebranta grape from which pisco is made, the ungrafted vines that survived phylloxera, and the voices of those making Peruvian wine today. It is a work of non-fiction, but I wrote it so that it reads like a story: the one I would have liked to read myself.
Where to find it
The Forgotten Wine is available on Amazon, in paperback and Kindle editions: you can find it here.
If you read it, let me know what you think. Really, I'm interested. And if you know someone who likes wine, history or journeys that start where you least expect them, pass on the link. Some roots deserve to keep going deeper.