Rooted in Tradition

For Ottavio (“Otto”) Angelico, making wine is more than a passion. It’s in his DNA.

Growing up in Sicily, Angelico remembers spending time in his family’s vineyard, which was founded by his great-great-grandparents, Salvatore and Maria Pedi, in 1905. While the vineyard ended commercial production in the late 1970s, it’s currently owned by his parents, who still keep a smaller number of vines, while also tending a grove of blood oranges.

“When I was a kid, I loved La Vendemmia,” he says, referring to the Italian grape harvest season, when everyone would gather to eat pasta and enjoy wine from the previous vintage. “I’d play among the vines while my family made food and picked grapes. It always felt like a celebration. It was about fun, food, wine—and a little bit about working.”

Fast-forward to 2002. After graduating with a degree in engineering from the University of Catania, Italy, Angelico sought adventure. “I decided to learn English and move to the United States to pursue the American dream,” he says.

His first stop was Canada, where he moved to earn a Masters in Robotics at Ryerson University in Toronto. He later moved to Prince Edward Island to work as a mechanical engineer for an interior mass transit design company called Testori Americas Corporation. It was in Canada where he met his wife, Lily, and where his winemaking past came into the present. “Alcohol is highly regulated in Canada. It can only be sold in specific, government-regulated stores—even the cheap wine is expensive,” he says. “After we got married, I told Lily I was going to make wine in the basement because it costs an arm and a leg to buy it around here.” And so he did, making Riesling, Pino Grigio, Cabernet, and Pino Noir at home with grapes he purchased.

Then his engineering job moved him and his family to Plattsburgh, New York. “By now I was making a few varietals at home,” he says. “In Plattsburgh, there were no wineries—everyone was drinking liquor or beer, so we thought maybe we should open one. Without competition, we knew we’d be successful.”

Just as they were about to sign the lease for their first storefront, his current employer, L’Oreal, moved Angelico and his family once more, this time to New Jersey. “We’d already committed to opening a winery,” he says, “and we were still determined to do so.”

They started looking for land. In 2019, after three years of searching, they found the perfect spot: a hillside property in Delaware Township. “It was an old horse farm,” he says, “with a house, barn, and a big open field with lots of sun exposure.” He opened Angelico Winery in 2022.

In addition to having good soil health, the three-and-a-half-acre vineyard on the ten-acre property, 600 to 700 feet above sea level, has a high water table and is situated on a windy hill—a huge benefit for growing grapes in New Jersey, where the climate runs humid. Excessive humidity is especially harmful during harvest time in September or October.

“You don’t want it to rain the week you’re about to pick the grapes,” Angelico says. “They need to be dry so they don’t get oversaturated and burst.”

Another challenge: Ripe grapes make for tasty snacks for foxes, raccoons, opossums, birds, and bees, which require decoys, deterrents (like the watchful gaze of Olympia and Chiara, their two German shepherds) and special netting to deter them. “Every day on the vineyard requires constant walking the rows of vines, pruning, and field upkeep,” Angelico says.

The vineyard employs sustainable practices such as limiting pesticides by mowing and seeding cover crops to help deter erosion while adding nutritional balance to the fields. These essential tasks are shared by a small crew of seasonal workers and the Angelico family, including their two sons, Antonio, 21, and Giulio, 16, who represent the sixth generation.

While a device called a refractometer is used to gauge the sugars in the grapes (known as Brix) to predict their ripeness, familiarity and a little intuition come into play. “How do you know when they’re ready? By your heart,” Angelico says. “You’re always walking the fields, seeing, feeling, touching, and tasting the grapes.” He adds jokingly, “The birds will let you know when they’re ready, too.”

Angelico pays homage to his Italian heritage by growing mostly Italian varietals like Barbera from Piedmonte and Sangiovese from Tuscany. He also cultivates Pino Grigio, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, and Riesling, as well as specialty grapes for their blends, including Baco Noir and Traminette—all which grow well in their central Jersey climate. White grapes ripen the end of August, reds in mid-September.

After the grapes are crushed and de-stemmed, they are barrel-aged—the length of time depending on the variety—then bottled, corked, labeled, and stored in their climate-controlled room. Some younger wines are ready to drink within a year—others are aged for three to four years before being sold and can be aged an additional ten.

The wines can be sipped in the winery’s tasting room. In addition to vineyard tours and guided tastings, autumn brings new wine releases (the winery has a wine club for those who want to be the first to know), as well as other seasonal events. (Visit angelicowinery.com for details.)

Several local restaurants offer Angelico wines, including Bistro 55 in Flemington and Marinelli’s in Raritan Township, as well as the Spinning Wheel in Clinton Township. They can also be found at the Valenzano Wine Fest in Shamong, New Jersey, on September 20.

As for landing in the River Towns, Angelico counts his luck.

“We love the friendly, small-town vibe,” he says. “When we bought the property, we were so focused on appealing to the New York and Philadelphia crowd that we didn’t realize we were already in an area so steeped in food and culture. It was the cherry on the cake, and we couldn’t be happier.”

Lauren Johnson is a freelance writer and regular contributor to River Towns. She wrote about The Bubbly Goat farm in Sergeantsville in the Summer issue.