Scacciadiavoli
Nestled in the rolling hills of Montefalco, in the heart of Umbria, Cantina Scacciadiavoli is one of the region’s most evocative and historic estates. Its unusual name—”devil chaser”—comes from a centuries-old legend of an exorcist who lived at the edge of the property and used the local wine to cast out evil spirits, a story so vivid it gave its name to the small hamlet that still bears it today.
The winery itself was founded in 1884 by Ugo Boncompagni Ludovisi, Prince of Piombino, who established a visionary, French-style winery built to be a cutting-edge technological model for the entire Umbrian territory. The estate’s architecture reflects this ambition: a kind of futuristic fortress, partly underground, where the natural slope of the land allows grapes to be brought in at the top and gravity carries the wine down through fermentation to the aging cellars below.
Through the generations the estate passed to Senator Rolandi Ricci—under whom Scacciadiavoli became the first winery to vinify Sagrantino as a dry wine, with the legendary 1921 and 1924 vintages—and then, since 1954, into the hands of the Pambuffetti family, now in its fourth generation, with Amilcare, Carlo, and their children and grandchildren Liù, Iacopo, Romeo, Fiammetta, and Amilcare jr. carrying the tradition forward.
Today the estate spans 130 hectares, with 40 hectares planted to vineyards at an average altitude of 400 meters on clay-rich, medium-deep soils especially suited to late-ripening varieties like Sagrantino. True to its pioneering spirit, the winery was again first in 2005 to vinify Sagrantino using the classic (Champagne) method, launching the now-celebrated Sagrantino-based Brut and Rosé sparkling wines—a tradition the family deepened further in 2023 with the acquisition of the Champagne house Marie Clugny.
From its noble origins under a Roman prince to its modern reinvention by the Pambuffetti family, Scacciadiavoli stands as a living thread connecting Umbria’s winemaking past to its future—an estate where history, architecture, and the powerful Sagrantino grape come together in every bottle.
