Tuscany, Italy
We are in Montalcino, in the hamlet of Castelnuovo dell’Abate. It was here in 1975 that a lawyer, Gabriele Mastrojanni, bought the San Pio and Loreto estates by the Orcia river and decided to plant his first vineyards. The vineyards form a southern panorama, sweeping from the east to the west, nestled in woods broken by rocky outcroppings. These sparse lands with low yields require the vines to have years and years of rooting to reach the nutrients they need. The extinct volcano Monte Amiata determines the microclimate, often tending to act as a guardian and divert storms. The fermentation and the aging is done entirely in concrete, the aim to control the vinification process, maintain lower and steadier fermentation temperatures, and optimize the accurate extraction of color, tannin, and structure. During fermentation, brushed concrete tanks are subject to micro-oxygenation processes while the glazed concrete tanks, with a more reductive nature, are specifically used for grapes with a greater structure. Aging takes place in a zero-iron cellar buried in the hillside, build entirely of terracotta arches and chestnut beams to avoid the inevitable static electricity and spiteful magnetic fields a Faraday cage can conjure.