Good winegrowers all know: it's about the vineyard, stupid. You can't produce great wine from grapes that are not ripe and healthy. Most of the farmers we work with spend 90+% of their time working in the vineyard to ensure the quality of the prima materia, the raw material, respective to time in the cellar. Here, Flavio Fanti of La Palazzetta gives Tony and me a tour of a new vineyard parcel he has just this spring planted. I was shocked to find the vineyard covered in alluvial stones, closely resembling the rounded galets found in the Southern Rhone Valley in France. But then again, one of the things that makes Brunello from Castelnuovo del'Abate so special is the extreme variation in soil types - galestro, calcareous, ferrous stone, darker richer friable clay, vineyards seem to change in soil composition every 10 or 20 meters.
Flavio Fanti
Newly planted vineyard. Note the rounded, alluvial stones resembling the galets of the Southern Rhone. The difference is, here we are not in a river valley but high in the hills of Montalcino.
Baby Sangiovese vine planted this year in March by the Fanti family. Vineyard area has now expanded to about 20 hectares. This vine will not be fully productive for 5 years.
