Valentiano is an estate winery in Località Mocali in Tavernelle on the southwestern side of the Montalcino region of Tuscany, Italy. Its main wines are Rosso di Montalcino DOC and Brunello di Montalcino DOCG.

Owners: Valentiano bears the names of Valentina (a biologist) and Fabiano, its owners. The logo proposes a symbol borrowed from Celtic mythology: the tree of life, whose roots are intertwined with the branches to represent the circularity of life.

History: It is in the rural context of the Montalcino countryside that Savino Ciacci was born at the end of the century in one of the many peasant families. Married to Luisa Moricciani in the early 1900s, they go to live on the Colombaio farm in Montosoli. From their union, Dino was born in 1908, the first of 5 children. Soon the call to arms for the Great War will leave the fatherless family. Falling who knows where during one of the shoulders on the Isonzo, Savino Ciacci gave his life for his homeland, like thousands and thousands of peasants used as “cannon fodder”.

At the age of 10 he found himself head of a family with 4 brothers and sisters, to which another would soon be added, Dino, with a capital consisting of 2 cows, 4 sheep, 4 goats and 3 or 4 hens, he moved in 1924 to podere Nacciarello and the following year in the Mocali estate.

At that time Mocali, like most of the farms in the area around the Tavernelle area, was owned by the Count of Argiano. The title to which the management of the farm was entrusted to Dino was the sharecropping contract, a typical experience of central Italy, consisting in the concession of a farm by the owner to a head of the family with the obligation to reside permanently and take care of its management. Profits and products were generally divided to the extent of 53% to the sharecropper and 47% to the grantor, even if in reality each farm had particular agreements.

In 1934 Dino married Clarina Bernazzi, giving birth the following year to the first-born Silvano. With the second post-war period Italy was preparing to radically change its social aspect, and Dino and his family found themselves experiencing that historical passage in the forms of land management: in 1952 Dino bought the Mocali farm from the count of Argiano now in ruins, and passed from sharecropper to direct farmer; it was the first step in a process of change that will lead from production aimed at self-consumption to production aimed at the market. Sharecropping was then abolished by national law in 1962, but at that moment for a poor peasant family it was an epochal conquest. With this do not think that the hardships and privations were over, life continued to be particularly hard for those who worked the land and the sirens of the industrial miracle were still very fascinating. We lived for little, selling some calves, some lambs, some oil, some wine and wheat.

At the end of the 1960s the first modern type vineyards were planted, that is a plot of land with only vines, while previously rows of vines and olive trees alternated (generally 20 vines and 1 olive tree) and between one row and another a land on which wheat was sown. In 1967 Dino was among the founding members who gave life to the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino. From the 1970s the farm passed under the management of Silvano who in 1961 married Ofelia Pinsuti and from whose union in 1971 Fabiano was born.

The strong recession of the 1970s certainly did not improve the living conditions of Montalcino peasants, on the contrary it worsened them; so much so that there was a real exodus to the cities: the farms were abandoned en masse and Montalcino became a place of emigrants. In the countryside, people continued to arrange as best they could, pastoralism and livestock farming became the main livelihood, and even forms of the Domestic System were not disdained to scrape together a little more.

With the 1980s the wind changed: the whole national social and economic life began to flourish again, and even the Montalcino countryside slowly saw interesting prospects on the horizon, with a growing popularity of Brunello wine which in the 1990s found the own consecration and absolute glory in the new millennium. So much so that other vineyards were planted in Mocali at the beginning of the decade.

At the end of the 1990s the management of the company passed to Fabiano, who in 2001 married Valentina Macinai. New management equals new vineyards, new cellar and two new visits by the stork that brought Tiberio and Ascanio.

Terroir: Most of the estate is located at about 400 meters above sea level. Well ventilated and covered with woods. Dense Mediterranean scrub, in which it is immersed, grows here with such vigor as to provoke very particular sensations: going up to Montalcino from the eastern or western side, there is a moment in which a very pleasant change is clearly perceived: the the air suddenly becomes slightly pungent and fresh, fragrant; breathing seems easier and one is pervaded by a feeling of lightness.

Vineyards: The cultivated soils are reddish in colour, testimony of the richness of iron. The soils are characterized by a strong component of marl, which gives excellent drainage that together with an exposure from north-east to south-west and the fabulous microclimate of which already mentioned, they are excellent for the cultivation of vines and olive trees.

Both the vineyards and the olive groves are partly recently planted, late 1990s, and partly dating back to the 1970s. The grape variety used is exclusively Sangiovese, while the cultural varieties of the olive trees range from Leccino to Moraiolo to Olivastra.

Viticulture: No herbicides. Inter-cep. The soil is fertilized only with stable manure, raw or pelleted. The training system of the vineyards is the classic spurred cordon and the sixth of the planting is about 4,000 plants per hectare. Each plant is left with 4 fruit heads with two buds that will each carry a branch with 2 bunches of grapes. Bud thinning in spring. The goal is to have one cluster per branch for a total of 8 clusters per plant of approximately 200 grams each, in order to respect a ratio of 1 kg of grapes per 1 m2 of leaf area exposed to the sun.

Winery: The recently built winery uses the most modern technologies in the oenological field: from temperature-controlled fermentation tanks, to eccentric screw pumps, to temperature and humidity control systems and anything else we have been able to achieve with our modest forces.

Winemaking: Hand harvested with small baskets. Still at the mouth of the destemmer the bunches are inspected one by one to eliminate, if any, those that are not suitable. Already from these harvest selections it is established which will be the tanks that will become Brunello, obviously the best, such as those to be allocated to Rosso D.O.C. and which ones to be allocated to red I.G.T . Of course, further confirmation of the choices made will have to arrive directly from the cellar over time.

The de-stemmed and softly pressed grapes undergo a pre-fermentation maceration of 2 days at a controlled temperature below 15 ° C, after which they are left free to ferment with care that the temperature never exceeds 28 ° C. At the end of the fermentation the tanks are closed with the filler and the racking takes place 25 days after the harvest. The pomace is then pressed with a pneumatic press at a maximum pressure of 0, 8 BAR in order to extract only flower wine. Within 48 hours of racking, the pomace is delivered to an artisan distillery in the area which immediately prepares the distillate. The new wine obtained is left in the vats at a constant temperature of 22 ° C to favor the malolactic fermentation. At the end of the latter, the wine is separated from the foundations and placed in oak barrels for the expected aging period: 8 – 12 months for the Rosso and 24 – 36 months for the Brunello. After aging in wood, the wine is bottled for refinement in the bottle.

Red wines

Rosso Toscano, Bonaventura: Brief time in oak.

Rosso di Montalcino DOC, Campo di Marzo:

Rosso di Montalcino DOC, Campaperi: The name Campaperi is nothing more than a sort of Tuscan distortion of “Campo dei peri”, or rather the name of the field on which the first specialized vineyard the estate planted in the 1960s. South-facing. Tyrrhenian sea breezes. Soil is reddish in colour with a lot of gravel slowly crumbled over the centuries, at the end of which there were some wild pear trees. Same base wine as the Brunello di Montalcino DOC Campaperi, drawn off at the end of the fermentation. 12–15 months in 30hl Slavonian oak barrels, before being bottled.

Brunello di Montalcino DOC, Campo di Marzo: The name chosen for our wine has distant origins, so it must go back over the centuries up to the early medieval period. At that time there were no professional armies, the soldiers were nothing but free peasants, who fought on foot, because horses were a rare and precious commodity, in campaigns that took place in the spring and summer months, there was in fact no way to protect yourself from the rigors of the cold season. They were also short because first, there was no food supply system capable of guaranteeing sustenance for the fighters for extended periods of time, and second everyone had to go home in time for the harvest.

At the beginning of spring all the warriors were gathered: thus a military magazine called “Campo di Marzo” took place because it took place in that month (March or marzo in Italian); this gathering marked the departure of the peasants, who had to return to their lands at the end of the summer in time to harvest the wheat and harvest the grapes. The practice of carrying out this military gathering called March Camp starts with the people of the Franks, especially under the Merovingian dynasty; but it is with the Carolingian dynasty that the typical institutions of the Franks spread beyond the Alps up to even the Italian regions. Therefore, our ancestors who lived in the south-western part of the Montalcino area, called Fundo Resciano at the time, and belonging to the Longobard parish church of Santa Restituta, did not escape this rule.

Brunello di Montalcino DOC, Campaperi: See above for the origin of the name.

Other products: Grappa di Brunello, Utopia. | Olive oil from Olivasta, Leccino and Moraiolo. | Grape jam Hand made from ripe grapes, without the addition of dyes, preservatives, gelling agents or acidity correctors, but, as handed down by the local peasant culture, adding lemon and apple seeds as natural thickeners to the grapes, and lemon juice as a preservative. Excellent for the preparation of pies and desserts; pleasant for breakfast; delicious if accompanied with aged cheeses, ricotta or raveggiolo. | Brandy obtained from wine distilled with a discontinuous system of low-grade columns and indirect steam. It is patiently aged for about 15 years in small oak barrels. The softness and variety of aromas introduce the full and soft taste with long persistence and pleasantness. To be served at the end of a meal at a temperature of 16 ° C.

Contact

Azienda Agraria Il Valentiano

Località Mocali n° 273

I-53024 Montalcino (SI), Italy

Tel+39 0577 848576 | www.ilvalentiano.it