My name is Alfredo Gallone, I come from Italy. I’ve been here 36 years. My family originally was in the town of Tricase in the 1500’s. He was named prince of Tricase in 1536, I believe. Then, you know, he got more titles and he got his own little feud down in southern Italy around his village.
I am a descendant of this family and I decided to use the family crest as the name of the winery. In Italy all the big wineries are owned by the noble families because they are the only ones who still own the property.
So I decided to keep that, because, you know, it sounded good. Even though it’s kind of hard for everybody to say Principe Di Tricase I think that the story behind it makes it worthwhile.
I had a friend here in Ramona who had a winery called Salerno Winery. he was working very hard to succeed, making pizza and potluck every sunday. I would go there and help him making pizza for his customers. So he was singing and kind of the same people would come every weekend and it was kind of nice. He made unbelievable great wines and everyone was having a good time.
I’ve been in real estate my whole life, behind a desk and I thought it would be a nice retirement job to be with the people, you know, making food and providing some kind of relaxing time and happiness.
So I bought a property not to far from him here in Ramona. When this place was named an AVA, I thought it would expand. In fact, right now there are about 20, I believe 27 wineries in Ramona. If you drive around this valley now you can see great growth everywhere. It looks really different, and nice.
Now, since there are many people here who know how to make great wine and the wines that are more well known are the Cabernet, the Merlot, the Pinot Noir. I investigated a little bit before deciding what kind of grape to plant and i decided to go with the ancient grapes, mostly from the area where I came from, which is southern Italy (Napoles).
I found out that Aglianico is one of the most ancient grapes that was used during the roman times and has a particular capability of preserving itself because of the skin and the way the grape is.
I also found that the other grape is Aleatico which is a grape that is mostly cultivated on the island of Elba in Italy. Napoleon was very fond of this wine. One particular way of making it is as a Passito which means that after harvest the grape is dried out and then pressed and it makes awine that is close to a liquor. Many, many compare it to a port. But port is made with additional alcohol, spices and sugar but this one is 100% Natural.
The way i make my wines is as natural as I can. using sulphites only at harvest. Using no sulphites while their wine. I don’t use yeast, I don’t check acidity, i don’t do any of the things that every winery does here. I have no, I would say “professional knowledge” of making wine. I just make wine the ancient way.
In 2012 - 2015 I submitted my wine to several competitions and won like 12 medals. Mostly silver medals from places like finger lakes, International Riverside County & Orange County. Lately I even won a bronze medal from the wineries here in ramona. They made a little competition between the local wineries and they honored me with the one medal, Which was really a surprise to me. I don’t have much of a connection with anybody because I just do my own things.
I have almost ten acres of land of which about 3-4 acres, are cultivated in grapes. In addition to the Aglianico and the Aleatico I have a little bit of Nebbiolo, Petite Syrah and some Concord Grapes. Which are grapes that are usually used for food. You know, eating grapes. But it comes out very aromatic, white, strong wine which is particularly interesting.
We do everything here except making the glass bottles and the corks. I mean we buy those. But we bottle here, we cork them here, we print the labels, we do everything from scratch.
I bought the property in 2007, I think in 2009 I did a little bit of harvest so I have wine from 2009 to today. The winery is really tiny. My production is only like 500 cases a year.
Our tasting room is going to be open from now, to see if I can get people in just driving by.