Vignamaggio, or Villa Vignamaggio is an organic winery in Greve-in-Chianti in Tuscany’s Chianti Classico DOCG region. As well as red wines, Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC is also produced. The estate lies south-east of Greve town centre, roughly midway between Florence and Siena, and at the heart of the Chianti Classico region.
History: Vignamaggio has been a working vineyard and farm since at least 1404. This was a period during which a cultural re-birth or Renaissance began to reshape both European thought–abstract concepts regarding religion, money, morality, science, art and architecture–and its physical landscape. Nowhere was this felt and seen more strongly than in what is today Tuscany’s Chianti Classico’s heartland. Chianti Classico’s two extremities are Florence, the home of Renaissance art, and Siena, the home of Renaissance banking whose patronage funded the former. Vignamaggio’s elegantly proportioned pink villa and grounds were created during this time by the Gherardi family.
Early 1300s: The Gherardini family build the first part of Villa Vignamaggio. | 1404 a letter dated 26th October 1404 provides the first surviving reference to Chianti, a barrel-aged red Vignamaggio wine made under owner Amido Gherardini. | 1421 The Gherardinis cede Vignamaggio to the Gheradi [sic] family to pay off debts. | 1503 A Gherardi niece called Monna Lisa Gherardini (b.1479) was almost certainly a frequent visitor. In 1503 a local artist called Leonardo da Vinci or “Leonardo from Vinci” (the town just to the west of Florence) started painting her portrait, but in his studio in Florence.
Late 1500s, early 1600s: Vignamaggio takes its current architectural form under the Gheradi. | 1925 Vignamaggio is bought by Contessa Elena Samminiatelli.
1987: In late 1987 Vignamaggio was bought by a group headed by Rome-based lawyer Gianni Nunziante. He moved into the villa in early 1988, started renewing Vignamaggio’s somewhat neglected vineyards (then comprising just over 40 hectares) whilst installing new winemaking equipment and a gravity-fed winery in the ancient underground cellars. Under Nunziante (who employed Franco Bernabei as consultant winemaker), Vignamaggio’s red wines were representatively styled for that era’s zeitgeist: boldly coloured and with ripe flavours of dark fruit, often with a noticeable but rarely intrusive sheen of oak. One of his signature wines was a Cabernet Franc, made from vines Nunziante discovered when doing a vineyard audit. The cuttings had originally arrived here during the hard-scrabble 1950s, carried from France by artists who appeared to have been as irrationally fearful of Tuscany’s potentially wine-less evenings as they were enchanted by its famed light and landscapes. These potential magnets, and its proximity to Florence, convinced Nunziante to pioneer Tuscany’s modern renaissance in luxury farm tourism, or agritourism. Guests could enjoy the full Renaissance experience but with the hitherto elusive luxuries of both central heating and flushable WCs thrown in. | 1988 Vignamaggio registered as Italy’s first official farm/vineyard agriturismo. | 1992 Vignamaggio was the setting for Kenneth Branagh’s film of Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado about Nothing”. | 2014 Patrice Taravella (see more on him directly below takes over Vignamaggio, begins transforming it into a ‘farm of the future.‘ | 2015 Vignamaggio buys Villa di Vitigliano.
Patrice Taravella: Taravella was born in 1953 to Italian parents who had moved to France between the world wars, oscillating between their home in Paris and a bolthole in Normandy where Patrice was born. ‘It was a rich situation,‘Taravella says ‘to have two countries, two languages, two cultures, two ways of living. My father could neither read nor write, but he worked hard to send me and my [4] brothers to school. He implicitly understood the value of learning.‘
When asked about how he got his family surname, and whether there was a rich family seam of Taravellas he answers simply by saying “our town in Italy was called Taravalli,” code for when the options of beng able to read and write do not exist, so you name yourself after your local landmark.
As Patrice Taravella’s family were builders and engineers he started drawing. “I drew farm landscapes, but not the farmers nor their animals. Just the buildings. I loved buildings which people who had made no architectural plans had created using only whatever materials they found or scavenged locally. In Italy the brickwork on castles and noble buildings is covered by plaster [dark pink in Vignamaggio’s case]. But on the farm buildings you can see the stone, because it is left bare. In France it is the other way around.”
While Taravella is capable of drawing up architectural plans on his own–Vignamaggio’s winery is due to be tweaked again soon to make each wine’s journey through it smoother while creating overall energy efficiencies–he is reliant on his team, headed by Carla Bani on the administrative side and Francesco Naldi in the vineyards. They have over 50 years’ experience at Vignamaggio between them but no one is looking backwards.
All Vignamaggio’s vines are in the commune of Greve and most of them are Sangiovese,’ says Naldi. ‘But they are in five different places and on seven different terroirs. We farm each block on its merits. The needs of a Sangiovese vine in the hamlet of Lamole on light, free-draining sandy soil potentially subject to heat stress are very different to those of Sangiovese vines on more water-retentive clay near the Greve river or those in the sun-trap or ‘Conca d’Oro’ [“Golden Bowl’] in the hamlet Panzano. We use grapes from two different zones [mainly Greve and Lamole] for both the regular Chianti Classico, and for the Riserva [mainly Greve and Panzano]. We have always had a mindset of farming each plot on its merits, to try to prevent problems from occuring, rather than trying to stamp out problems after they have occurred. We have changed the pruning in some older vineyards to get more even ripeness. In this case it meant spending more on labour in spring, but the pay off is more grapes and of better quality in autumn. We see it is a win-win. With organics the tannins in the red wines are smoother. The fruit flavours–and here the dominant one is of dark plum–are more vivacious. Overall there is a sense of more elegance, of a wine more in tune with itself. Our oldest clients, meaning those who have supported us over the time [27 years] I have been here, have noticed the change. And more importantly, they support it.’
Organic certification: 2018 Vignamaggio due full organic certification for the first time.
Noah’s Ark project: Taravella created this project to preserve the genetic bio-diversity of the estate’s vineyards. “‘When an old vineyard is uprooted, its genetic heritage and variability is lost forever. New vineyards rely on commercially available clones, and the quality of these is excellent. This is how we maintain consistency in our wines, although we are grateful for role the pedoclimatic environment plays in creating diversity. From 2010 they began selecting budwood from superior old vines before they were due to me grubbed up. The vegeto-productive behaviour of 201 more plants was studied, in addition to taking material from them for grafting.
In 2016 they were planting about 6000 m2 of vineyards using a collection of plants originating from these old vines, primarily Sangiovese, but also red and white Canaiolo, white Malvasia, Trebbiano, Ciliegiolo, Colombana, Mammolo and the relatively unknown varietal, Occhiorosso. They conducted micro-vinification tests to establish the oenological potential of budwood from the first 27 mother vines planted.
Organics: Vignamaggio implemented organic practices across its entire vineyard from 2014 but Patrice Taravella does not see organics as an end in itself. Instead, Taravella sees Vignamaggio becoming what he calls “a small oasis of bioversity”, with vegetable and herb gardens, olive groves and fruit orchards (1,200 trees planted since 2016), plus wheat whose flour will be baked into bread in the estate’s own oven, and livestock, in this case pigs. “As pigs love the foraging for acorns in the forest this is where we have put them. And their manure is a useful addition to our compost,” he says, meaning the manure provides the compost pile with a range of microbes which make the soil more appealing to earth worms. But when Taravella speaks about re-creating the kind of mixed farms the Medicis created and which were so beautifully drawn by Bartolomeo Bimbi in the 1500s, is he not at risk of trumping substance for style? “No, because my view is one revolving around evolution. If I really wanted to be living in 1550, to go back to that, I would not be alive! Wanting to follow tradition does not mean that you have chosen to come to a stop. Tradition in this case is not trying to re-do the past. It is wanting to create something that has conservation of the past at his heart whilst–in this case–‘being the vineyard as a farm of the future’. Luxury is not money, nor is it silver and gold. True luxury is knowing exactly what you have on your plate.”
Annual production: 230,000 bottles.
Winery: In 2010, a new winemaking cellar was completed (started in 2009) directly opposite the villa and capacity expanded. A big move to quality. Through the acquisition of small parcels, Nunziante also expanded into the Gaiole area of Chianti Classico where Sangiovese and Syrah are grown.
Red wines
Il Morino: Toscana Rosso. Entry-level unoaked Sangiovese-Merlot blend.
Obsession: 1998 Bottled. | 1999 Bottled
Cabernet Franc: From two plots in Greve. Around 6,000 bottles. | 2015 100% Cabernet Franc. 14.5% alc. 0,5g/l residual sugar. Fermentation and MLF in stainless steel. Aged two years in French oak barrels.
Sangiovese di Vitigliano: 2015 100% Sangiovese.
Chianti Classico DOCG, Terre di Prenzano: The entry level Chianti Classico DOCG. 100% Sangiovese. 12 months in barrels. | 2000 Bottled. | 2016 100% Sangiovese. | 2017 100% Sangiovese. | 2018 100% Sangiovese.
Chianti Classico DOCG Riserva, Gherardino: Mainly Sangiovese (aged in large oak vats) plus Merlot (aged in smaller barrels). | 2015 90% Sangiovese, 10% Merlot. 14.5% alc. 0,5g/l residual sugar. Alcoholic fermentation and MLF in stainless steel. 18 months oak barrels.
Chianti Classico DOCG Riserva, Monna Lisa: 1993 Bottled. | 1994 Bottled. | 1995 Bottled. | 1997 Bottled. | 1998 Bottled. | 1999 Bottled
Chianti Classico DOCG Gran Selezione, Monna Lisa: Vignamaggio’s flagship. 85% Sangiovese, 15% Merlot. Aged 30 months before release of which c.24 months in oak. | 2015 85% Sangiovese, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot.
Vignamaggio: 1999 100% Cabernet Franc.
Vin Santo
Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC: Sweet white wine from Malvasia and Trebbiano Toscano. Aged 5 years in small wooden barrels or caratelli (80-100 litres). | 2012 60% Malvasia del Chianti, 40% Trebbiano Toscano.
Contact
Vignamaggio
Villa Vignamaggio
Via di Petriolo 5,
50022 Greve in Chianti (FI), Italy
Website: See here.
Via di Petriolo 5,