The History – Katundi

Our Vision

To unlock the niche market in which mead, an alcoholic beverage made from water and honey with a captivating charm and ancient history, is still relegated in Italy. Katundi Sas is a company founded with the intent to restore the prestige that mead deserves and to contribute to the beekeeping sector, which has never been so crucial for the preservation of biodiversity.

Alongside the passion for mead, there is also a passion for another ancient ferment that is making a strong comeback: Kombucha in its most artisanal and strictly “raw” form.

Why Katundi?

Katundi is the name in archaic Albanian for Greci, a small village in Irpinia that hosts the only Arbëresh linguistic minority in Campania. For its inhabitants, Katundi (which literally means village) is synonymous with home and hearth. The village, like many rural realities in Italy, risks losing an exceptional historical and cultural heritage due to depopulation and youth emigration.

The honey we use to create our meads comes from Greci and the unspoiled and solitary surrounding countryside between Daunia and Irpinia.

Who We Are

Katundi Sas brings together the heart, strength, and ideas of: Alessio Di Paola, a project manager in the IT sector, who has complemented his technological career with an education in food and wine. Starting from small productions of alcoholic beverages (beers and liquors from the early 90s), he later obtained qualifications as a sommelier and official taster for the Italian Sommelier Association and, most recently, undertook studies to become a doctor in Gastronomy, Hospitality, and Territories with the corresponding degree course at the Faculty of Economics at Universitas Mercatorum. He graduated with honors, presenting a thesis on the creation of the Katundi startup. He is a judge and official taster of mead in the Mead Judging Programme.

Ilaria Caputo, who has a background as a Financial Director in multinational insurance groups and is currently a Transformation Officer in a consulting firm with the aim of optimizing internal processes, combines her passion for organization and numbers with that for food and wine. A certified sommelier for the Italian Sommelier Association, she has previously managed her family’s restaurant and now passionately supports the Katundi project.

Katundi Sas also collaborates and shares friendships with artists, designers, photographers, journalists, poets, philosophers, alchemists, cartoonists, magicians and witches, writers, sommeliers, warriors, and musicians.

Each bottle is the result of an intuition, an idea that converges into a multisensory and interdisciplinary project driven by genuine passion and the desire to create.