“I am in love with this area,” gushes Roberto Bruno, walking along the top of his flagship vineyard, called Quattro Venti, in Campania’s tiny Greco di Tufo appellation. The vineyard dramatically slopes down from the hilltop in all directions, with a mix of soil layers that include sedimentary stones from an ancient lake, volcanic pumice and tuff, and veins of natural sulfur. But Roberto’s comment refers to all of this wildly varied appellation. “There is nothing else I know that is this complex.”

Roberto, 55, and his sister, Teresa, 44, are my kind of wine people. They’ve not only built their Petilia estate from scratch in their hometown of Altavilla Irpinia (pop. 4,000), but they are also grower-producers rooted in their local soils—so much so that they wouldn’t dream of making wine anywhere else.