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THIS IS MY LANDFRANCO BIONDI SANTI, MONTALCINO AND BRUNELLO

maurizio boldrini, bruno bruchi, andrea cappelli

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THIS IS MY LANDFRANCO BIONDI SANTI, MONTALCINO AND BRUNELLO

THIS IS MY LANDFRANCO BIONDI SANTI, MONTALCINO AND BRUNELLO

Maurizio Boldrini, Bruno Bruchi, Andrea Cappelli

Protagon Editori

Graphic DesignPaolo Rubei

EditorMonica Granchi

PhotographsBruno BruchiBiondi Santi Archives

English TranslationAN.SE. Srl - Colle Val d’Elsa, Siena

Pre-printing and printing Alsaba Grafiche, Siena

The photo of Fiaschetteria Italiana on page 38 is by Alexander Brookshaw

The authors would like to thank Franceso Belviso, Anna Maria Di Battista, Roberto Cappelli and Claudia Gasparri for their help in creating this book

The cover shot shows Franco Biondi Santi in the cellar of the antique reserves of Il Greppo, examining the colour of a bottle of Riserva 1888, vinified by his grandfather Ferruccio

Maurizio BoldriniBruno Bruchi

Andrea Cappelli

© Copyright 2009 Protagon Editori© Copyright 2010 Protagon Editori, English versionAll rights reserved

ISBN 978-88-8024-308-3

No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or using any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the written authorisation of the holders of copyright.The Publishers have done everything within their power to identify and trace all those who hold the photographic and documentary rights. Should any of the pictures or texts used in this book belong to other people, the Publishers are at the disposal of those they were unable to contact.

THIS IS MY LANDFRANCO BIONDI SANTI, MONTALCINO AND BRUNELLO

SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION

THE ALCHEMIST wHO TURNS gRApES INTO LIqUID gOLD

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CHApTER ONE

THE BIONDI SANTI FAMILY TREE

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CHApTER TwO

IL gREppO AND THE pRODUCTION OF BRUNELLO

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CHApTER THREE

A SpECIAL wOOD FOR BRUNELLO

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CHApTER FOUR

THE ANTIqUE RESERvES AND THE RITUAL OF TOppINg Up

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CHApTER FIvE

THE REAL MOSCADELLO OF MONTALCINO

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CHApTER SIx

FROM NORMANDY TO THE RENAISSANCE OF SANT’ANTIMO

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BIBLIOgRApHY

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The grape harvest is one of the moments in which vines and grapes come into direct contact with man. Care and precision are needed, and everything has to take place at the right time and using the right techniques, which have been practiced for years and years

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WWhen he talks about his land, Montalcino, and about the Brunello it is now famous for, when he describes that segment of hill which slopes down towards the valley, encircled with Sangiovese vines and the monumental villa named Il Greppo in the middle, his eyes light up and his hands stroke that wood which conveys taste to his wines and sustains the old temperament of the country gentleman. The fact is that this land is his life and the wine is the golden chain that links him to it. So many people are making wine today and lots of wines often end up becoming very similar. But not his wines: in the colour, the perfume, the flavour and texture, they have the character of days gone by. That’s how it is because that’s exactly how he wants it to be, refusing to bow his head to the presumed new laws of a market which ends up transforming everything into soulless merchandise. Yet he’s a liberal. Observing that liberalism that underlay the making of Italy and nurtured him through the patriotic stories of the Risorgimento. For Franco Biondi Santi, the individual has an absolute value, which is mitigated by the values of catholic solidarity and a profound respect for nature. An old, catholic liberal who foreran numerous phenomena of Twenty-first century society, to the point where he has become champion of environmental and ecological battles. We ought to remember

INTRODUCTION

THE ALCHEMIST wHO TURNS gRApES INTO LIqUID gOLD

BIONDI SANTI, A wINE MADE Up OF THE NATURE AND CULTURE OF A TUSCAN TOwN

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that, centuries ago, his ancestor Santi explored the Maremma and Amiata districts with the curiosity of a scientist, his forefather Canali developed theories, considered blasphemous at the time, on the birth of Montalcino, and his grandfather Ferruccio Biondi Santi succeeded in drawing out of the devastation of phyloxera a Sangiovese vine which was to become the Brunello clone par excellence. Culture is not separate from nature, science does not oppose the arts: this age-old family has borne biologists and pharmacists, painters and poets, historians and scientists, farmers and businessmen who frequented the parlours of the aristocracy, the libraries of the old academies, the fields and the men and women who worked them in exactly the same manner. They were equally at ease dressed in Garibaldi’s red shirt for battle and in moleskin trousers for the grape harvest, as were the women in their evening dresses made of the softest silks. Consequently, the wine they made then and still make today simply has to be different from other wines. It isn’t easy to tell the story of a dynasty like this. It requires familiarity with the archives and an in-depth knowledge of winegrowing. It requires an ability to listen if the man telling this story is Franco Biondi Santi. The words carry you off in the distance and sound like those used by Gabriel García Márquez to describe the alternating vicissitudes of the Buendía dynasty and the charms of the village of Macondo. Not only does Franco Biondi Santi draw you into these fantastic worlds, he also changes, into an alchemist, as he takes the grapes in his hands, and transforms them into liquid gold. It’s Brunello. His Brunello, to which Mario Soldati bent his pen, the Brunello that conquered kings and presidents, that remained in the indelible list of the 12 best wines of the 20th century. But you’ll hear all about this in this book, in his words; you’ll see it in the rich iconographic documentation that enhances the volume; you’ll perceive it in its entirety through the photos that portray him in the everyday gestures that characterise his life. Many people have written about him and his wines (as is evident in the repertory and lengthy bibliography), and many are those who have been fascinated to such an extent as to convey a sense of incredibility to something which is extremely credible: the fantastic life of a nobleman from the Tuscan countryside.

Maurizio Boldrini, Bruno Bruchi, Andrea Cappelli

The memory of my family can be found in Montalcino Town Hall, in the library, where the “Fondo Canali Santi Biondi”, an archive of great historical importance, much of which is still unknown to scholars, is kept

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PPages and pages of evidence, documents collected into numerous archives, photos, objects and letters preserved with care at Il Greppo. Books that follow on from other books, like those by Kerin O’Keefe, “Franco Biondi Santi: The Gentleman of Brunello”, and Burton Anderson, “Biondi Santi: The Family that Created Brunello di Montalcino”. The story of this family, which has linked its double-barrel surname to the history of Italy’s culture and oenology, has been written and rewritten, sieved through by historians, journalists and oenologists. Yet…

Franco Biondi Santi takes just a moment to explain the complex family tree and uses affectionate and skilled brushstrokes to trace the profiles of his ancestors: everything began with Tullio Canali, whose daughter, Petronilla, married Luigi Santi, nephew of the famous geographer. Their marriage led to the birth, in Montalcino, of Clemente Santi and, with him, the Santi estate. It was 1789.

But let’s take a step backwards. Luigi Santi was a pharmacist, lover of the Italian and French classics, and a great lover of music, who accompanied all these professional and private interests with a strong sense of civil commitment, taking care of municipal business. A member of numerous Academies, including the Astrusi Academy, he wrote a historical-critical letter on the origins of Montalcino, which was

CHApTER ONE

THE BIONDI SANTI FAMILY TREE

THE STORY OF THE FAMILY TOLD BY FRANCO BIONDI SANTI AND BY THE DOCUMENTS

The certificates bearing witness to the nobility of Signor Jacopo Biondi: top – that of Florentine nobility, issued by the King of Etruria, Lodovico I, on 13 February 1803, below - that of Volterran nobility, issued by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopoldo II, on 9 September 1832.

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The Biondi family: top - Caterina Santi, below – two portraits of her husband Jacopo Biondi, as a young newly-wed-ded man and in his latter years.

The Santi family: top - Clemente Santi, below - Marina Tamanti, Clemente’s wife, with their granddaughter Paolina Biondi Santi, daughter of Jacopo and Caterina

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acclaimed in the Vieusseux “Antologia” (Anthology). The Santi family was of considerable importance: Luigi’s brother was the naturalist Giorgio Santi, professor of Natural History at Pisa University.

Baccio Baccetti, well-known academic of the Lincei and the Physiocritics, in the volume entitled “Cultura e Università a Siena” (Culture and University in Siena), reminds us of the role he played in 18th century Tuscan culture, stating: “In the three volumes that describe his travels throughout Siena, he mainly concentrates on the botanical and geological aspects of the regions visited; the work was a huge success, so much so that it was translated into the main European languages. He was one of the initiators of reports on explorations, drawn up following the odeporic method, adopted between the 18th and 19th centuries by numerous naturalist travellers”.

The Canali family, too, fully expressed the intellectual and bourgeois culture of the time: Petronilla was the daughter of Tullio Canali, famous for having written a “History” of Montalcino towards the middle of the 18th century, commissioned by the local Chancellery, sent to the Auditor of the Council, Pompeo Neri, in Florence.

It was in this climate that Clemente Santi grew up with his uncle Giorgio, who was his “beloved teacher” and who encouraged him to take his degree in Pharmaceuticals, in which he graduated from Pisa University, where his uncle taught, along with the finest scientists

and technicians who were revolutionising the study of agriculture at that time. Probably this is why it seemed so natural for him to link up with the Georgofili Academy and become correspondent of the “Giornale Agrario Toscano” (Tuscan Agrarian Journal). Returning to the family history, Franco Biondi Santi remembers: Immediately after graduating from University, while he was already beginning to write important agrarian science works, Clemente married Maria Tamanti, a landowner who brought several farms in Montalcino as part of her dowry, including the Colombaio and the Chiusa which, together with those he already owned in Montalcino and Pienza, made him one of the most conspicuous landowners in the area. He had two daughters with Maria: Paolina, who died while still very young, and Caterina, who was entrusted as a young girl to the teacher Sebastiano Brigidi, a Montalcinese patriot. As soon as she reached adulthood Caterina married Jacopo Biondi, a doctor from Pomarance and Florence. This is how the estate gained its double-barrel surname: Biondi Santi.

Besides living on in the reminiscences of this elegant country gentleman, the family memories are kept in Montalcino Town Hall, in the library, where the Canali Santi Biondi Fund, an archive of considerable historical relevance, is deposited, much of it still unexamined by scholars. The first catalogue of the documents, created in the mid-20th century, was destroyed and a brand new one, divided into sections, is currently being drawn up. It starts with the first books donated by Clemente Santi, in the late 17th century, to the Municipal Library, and continues with papers regarding the family; from the handwritten manuscript on the history of Montalcino written by Tullio Canali to an incunabulum dating back to 1489; from the one hundred and seventy “cinquecentine”, part of the family heritage, to a vast repertory of journals, mainly on scientific subjects, from the 19th and 20th centuries. Altogether, there are nine hundred and twenty works in about two thousand volumes with regard to the books alone.

In 1873 Clemente and his brother Tullio granted the Municipal Council perpetual use of their libraries, and the following year the Municipal Library, where their collections formed the most relevant fund, was inaugurated.

From these papers, and from the memories handed down from father to son, it is possible to reconstruct the saga of this family, expression of the Italian intellectual bourgeoisie of the time, as much in its public dimension, as in its more private and traditional sphere, linked to the birth and expansion of Brunello throughout the world.

Rummaging among these old documents, we discover Clemente’s great passion for art and local history: in the numerous letters sent to intellectual friends, like Guido Milanesi, in the articles published in “Nuovo Giornale dei Letterati” (New Journal of Scholars), “Journal

The birth of the Biondi Santi family: left - Caterina Santi, right - her husband Jacopo Biondi and, in the centre, their children Paolina and Ferruccio Biondi Santi.

Giorgio Santi, professor of Natural History at Pisa University, ancestor of Clemente, who lived at the end of the 18th century.

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des Savantes” (Journal of Savants) or “Antologia” (Anthology), he tells of his repeated excursions to the Terme Rosellane spa or describes a work by Vincenzo da San Gimignano, tracing an interesting picture of the activity performed by the painter in Montalcino. Clemente was a really multifaceted character: he composed verses and poems for village fairs and re-proposed, with his critical observations and notes, an excerpt from Tullio Canali’s “Storia inedita di Montalcino” (Unprecedented History of Montalcino). The origins of Montalcino have been commented upon by many people and even the members of the family have devoted considerable attention and intellectual energy to the subject.

This town, so firmly linked to the very idea of Brunello, boasts a variegated and complex history, so much so that there has been and continues to be much discussion in relation to its true origins. Most scholars attribute an Etruscan-Roman origin to Montalcino and agree that one of the first documents in which reference is made to it dates back to 814: the diploma with which Emperor Ludwig the Pious, son of Charlemagne, granted Apollinare, Abbot of Sant’Antimo, the territory on which the town was later to be built. Clemente Santi and Tullio Canali on the other hand claim that the foundation is due to the inhabitants of Roselle who, having been attacked by the Saracens, decided to withdraw, in 935, to a hill which was further inside the region and therefore safer: that settlement was later to take the name of Montalcino.

Albeit alongside history, Clemente Santi’s real passion was agronomy. He wrote an essay on the damages caused in the Maremma district by the cutting down of cork trees, in which he reports the collapse of the balance between man and nature caused by ignorance and human greed. It was 1827. The Biondi Santi family therefore has an antique passion for nature and its defence in the face of man’s

continuous aggressions and voracity for profit. Centuries later, his great-grandson Franco was to find himself battling against the desire to build a huge dump near his hills and the Brunello vineyards, while his son Jacopo was to fight against the presence of wind-power blades which are currently attacking one of the most delightful views of the Upper Maremma. Environment, cork, wine, the Maremme: words of yesterday and today, thick and heavy words, compared with those consumed so easily and often with great damage.

The fact is that Clemente was highly skilled in agriculture and all his writings bear traces of this skill in the duty and precision of the information and technical details. However, there appears to be no mention whatsoever among his documents of the question of social relations and the living conditions of the sharecroppers. The theme of modernisation of the countryside however livened up the debate between the Tuscan intellectuals, particularly those who formed the literary clique of the “Antologia”. A letter dated 24 March 1829 sent to Vieusseux, editor of the “Giornale Agricolo Toscano”, (Tuscan Agricultural Journal) is fundamental to assess the ideas that guided Santi in his activity as an agricultural entrepreneur, and how much he identified with the illuminist and liberal ideas of the group inspired by the Journal “Antologia”. The journal stressed the need to disseminate scientific notions which were useful to the practice of agriculture, and

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to elaborate clear and easy ways of making these notions known to the agricultural class, in order to encourage it to abandon improvised and unproductive methods.

At the exposition of natural and industrial products of Tuscany held in Florence in 1850, Clemente received praise for a “pretty sparkling moscadello”, while in that held in 1854 he presented an entire, extensive series of products such as Red Wine, Vin Santo, Moscadello Mussante, Malvasia Mussante, Lacrima d’Ebe, Alchermes Liquido and olive oil. During the same years he took part in the activity to extract the yellow soil of Casteldelpiano and in the production of bricks made of Amiata fossil flour, this latter activity earning him recognition at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1855. He also dedicated his time to water, in his capacity as owner of the Banditella spring, of which he wanted to exploit the curative properties, and worked on the foundation of the Agricultural Consortium of Siena. But it was at Il Greppo, on the developing estate – says Franco Biondi Santi, redirecting the conversation to the peculiarity of the birth and development of Brunello – that Clemente carried out his first experiments, thanks to his immense chemical and scientific knowledge in general, which made him a perfect oenologist. From being an attentive supporter of the scientific method, he began to observe the passing of time and realised that the vinification cycle employed in the Montalcinese territory differed from that of other areas: the grape harvest began sooner. After careful analysis of the soil, he selected the grape varieties

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best suited to that geological conformation. This was one of the most important moments for Brunello: thanks to Clemente’s studies, the great longevity of this wine was highlighted, along with the fact that this virtue made it finally suitable for exportation abroad. It was no mere coincidence that it was he, in 1865, who presented a bottle of red wine named “brunello”– using the lower case “b” – for the very first time, and that this wine received an award at the Agrarian Exposition of Montepulciano in 1869.

As mentioned earlier, Clemente had had two daughters: Paolina, who died while still very young, and Caterina, who had married Jacopo Biondi. The Biondis were also Tuscan, but not from Montalcino: they came from Pomarance and were descended from a noble family of antique lineage from Volterra. Jacopo was born in Pomarance, became a hygienist and wrote numerous essays on food and health.

But it was in the mid-19th century, with the birth of Paolina and Ferruccio, that the Biondi Santi family, in its current connotation, was formed.

Ferruccio soon showed a temperament worthy of the family: very young, aged just seventeen, he joined Garibaldi’s troops and took part, with his cousin Enrico, in the battle of Bezzeca. Gazing at the musket with the bayonet mounted used by his ancestor in that campaign – items which are jealously guarded at Il Greppo – Franco Biondi Santi says: Ours was a family in which liberal and Risorgimental values were of fundamental importance. If you go and look at the gravestone of the men from Montalcino who fought in the War of Independence, you’ll see Ferruccio’s name. During those years our family was such an active part of the Unity of Italy that it had to leave the Santi home to escape the enemies of the Unity, pursued as it was by the Sanfedists.

The family continued to cultivate a passion for art and culture: Ferruccio’s sister Paolina wrote poetry, while Ferruccio enjoyed painting. But Il Greppo, with its rows of vines and wine, was the thing that attracted him most, inducing him to continue the vinification experiments begun by his grandfather Clemente, until he finally produced the first “Brunello di Montalcino”.

The story of the birth of the authentic Brunello is known to everyone, but the head of the house tells it with the addition of new details every time: In those years, Europe and Il Greppo, too, were struck by ill fortune and the arrival of phyloxera from America, along with other terrible diseases that destroyed the vineyards. Ferruccio, however, being a brave and enthusiastic winegrower, didn’t lose hope. He sought explanations to provide long-term answers and realised that the Moscato vines used to make Moscadello had suffered more than those in the other vineyards, especially due to powdery mildew, while the Sangiovese vines had resisted better, particularly the Sangiovese Grosso.

At the age of 17, Ferruccio left with the Tuscan volunteers for the Trentino campaign – known as the third war of independence against the Austrian Empire, by the side of Garibaldi. A memorial under the loggia of the main square in Montalcino (known as the “Cappellone”) commemorates this.

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Every cloud has a silver lining. Every bit as stubborn as his grandfather, Ferruccio began selecting this clone of Sangiovese Grosso which had resisted the epidemic, finally finding the right grape variety and creating the wine we know today. Ferruccio Biondi Santi, going completely against those who made young wines to be drunk quickly, invested heavily in this new clone, forerunning by over a century consumer tastes and the current fashion for vinifying 100% Sangiovese, and breaking away from the traditional methods that focused mainly on Moscato grapes. From then onwards, he dedicated his time to “mass” selection, i.e.: in series, of Sangiovese by identifying mother plants: Every phase of production, enhancement and dissemination, both national and international, of Brunello was controlled personally – explains Franco Biondi Santi – purposely limiting production in order to pursue quality by selecting the best bunches, those which had most substance. Just think how Ferruccio was such a stubborn innovator: he purposely ignored the customs of Chianti, applying his own criteria and parameters to the fermentation process, in order to generate a wine suitable for ageing. This was a process in which the must spent a long time in contact with skins in the tanks, the aim being to create a balance of scents, flavours and colours that would stand the test of time. From that moment onwards, Brunello was aged in large oak

Above, on the far left, Ferruccio Biondi Santi, with his cousin Giovanni Biondi Santi on the far right, portrayed together with two Garibaldian comrades-in-arms.

The following page shows a work by Ferruccio Biondi Santi, who enjoyed painting in the “Macchiaiolo” style.

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barrels for years, before being bottled, with the aim of balancing the high level of total acidity and the quantity of tannins.

To better understand and fully appreciate the results achieved by Ferruccio Biondi Santi as a winemaker, we must consider the environment he worked in. While Montalcino was historically famed for its wine, the town owed this fame to Moscadello. Red wines still played a role of secondary importance in the area, despite the promising success of Clemente Santi. In those days, Tuscans usually preferred young red wines, similar to Chianti, obtained by vinifying black and white grapes together. Before being sold in demijohns or flasks, a slight sparkle was usually added to these wines with “governo”, a re-fermentation process induced with the sweet must of partially withered grapes. The resulting wines were light, with bite, and were often even sparkling. This formula was highly unsuitable for wines for ageing.

1888 was a decisive year for the Biondi Santi family. Ferruccio opened the “Fiaschetteria Italiana” (Italian Wine-shop) in the main square of Montalcino, which was then named after Queen Margaret of Savoy. That year, opposite his grandfather Clemente’s pharmacy, Ferruccio’s elegant Liberty style café sold the Brunello that bore the words “Fiaschetteria Italiana” on the label. It is to Ferruccio Biondi Santi that we owe the paternity of the Brunello that we know today,

the first grand Reserve of which dates back to 1888, immediately followed by the equally praiseworthy vintage of 1891. This paternity was even acknowledged by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in a document dated 1932, signed by the Minister in person. However, it was in 1880 that he had the first results from the new vines planted with the Sangiovese clone named Brunello, due to the dark colour acquired by the grapes as they ripened. Recognised and consecrated master all over Italy, the real acknowledgement came posthumously when, a few decades after his death, certainty was gained that the original organoleptic characteristics of his wines were maintained for a very long time compared with all the other dry wines, very few of which reached the age of 100.

This is why Brunello di Montalcino Biondi Santi, particularly that of Ferruccio, is considered to be among the world’s most long-lasting wines. In 1927, pre-empting by almost half a century a practice which later became one of the most special elements of the family tradition, the oldest bottles of wine, the 1888 and 1891 Reserves, the very first Brunello wines bottled by Ferruccio, were “topped up”.

Ferruccio Biondi Santi’s marriage to Orlandina Orlandini Caselli produced three children, Gontrano, Tancredi and Caterina Biondi Santi. The handing over of the estate came during the Great War and when their father died in 1917, the two brothers were at the front. The

Left – a bottle of Brunello 1917, sold at an auction of great wines at Sotheby’s in London in the 1960s or thereabouts. The bottle bears the original label with which Ferruccio Biondi Santi dressed his Brunello.

“Caffè Fiaschetteria Italiana 1888”, a member of the “Locali Storici d’Italia”, is known by everyone as the “Florian” of Montalcino, a delightful example of pure Liberty style, with red velvet sofas, mirrors, yellow marble tables, and display cabinets, all of which are originals of the time.

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context in which the two lived their youth also determined the destiny of the estate and particularly that of Il Greppo and its cultivations. The recession caused by the war and the great depression that followed had reduced the demand for high quality wines to the bare minimum. It is a well-known fact that bad luck usually comes in spates and, as proof, phyloxera returned to infest and destroy many vineyards. The two brothers initially tried to manage the estate together as best they could but in 1922, when the crisis was at its worst, they decided to go their separate ways. Tancredi bought his brother’s half of Il Greppo, the cellar and the vineyards. The collection of bottles of the old vintages of Brunello made by their father, including the 1888 and 1891, already bearing the signs of their longevity, was also shared.

Don’t think for one minute that our family history and the history of our estate have been a constant stream of successes. – warns Franco A portrait of the young Ferruccio Biondi Santi.

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Biondi Santi rereading that delicate passage – We have had to cope with family break-ups, business disasters and moments of tremendous difficulty. But there’s always been someone in the family who has continued to follow the shooting star that showed the way, leading us along the path of the great tradition of the Biondi Santis.

The man that followed the shooting star was Tancredi, who really knew the vineyards because, as a child, he had flanked his father in his oenological innovation and knowledge of the area. Not satisfied, he had gone, while still very young, to Conegliano Veneto to study oenology, before graduating in Agronomy from Pisa University. The Great War had left him with a wound: on Mount Sabotino he had been hit by an Austrian bullet and taken to the infirmary. Listening to Franco Biondi Santi tell this story is like having some of Hemingway’s writings in your hands: In the infirmary he met and made friends with Anna Tomada, a nurse originally from Trieste. Then my father was transferred to the military hospital in Florence and Anna, too, due to the Spanish flu that was raging in the area she came from, moved with her family to Tuscany. So they met again. The wound on his back healed, but his heart had suffered severe damage: and after a few years they got married.

Tancredi Biondi Santi’s obstinacy was rewarded for the first time in 1926, when the Biondi Santi wines earned the praise of one of the highest Italian authorities on the matter, Professor Arturo Marescalchi. It was in that same year that, from the genial idea of topping up, conceived to extend the life of the grand reserves, he developed a practice which would soon become a ritual, a ritual which his son Franco maintained and developed until it became one of the distinguishing features of the brand: the very essence of the legend of Brunello. The idea had come to him, perhaps, after a dinner with numerous winemakers at Brolio Castle. On that occasion, Tancredi Biondi Santi had offered the diners

The photo on the right shows a mid-18th century daguerreotype portraying the excavation work carried out to plant the Ginestreto vineyard.

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The original 1920s label of the “Cantina Sociale Biondi Santi e Compagni”. Opposite page – the label created especially by the Winegrowers’ Cooperative for the Agrarian Consortium of Siena and Grosseto.

the chance to taste the two reserves of 1888 and 1891. The story goes that baron Luigi Ricasoli, after tasting that Brunello, turned to Biondi Santi and confessed: “Well, I am unable to do this!”

While his ancestors had offered Montalcino the first library and had always fought for the consolidation and growth of their hometown, Tancredi Biondi Santi sensed that the relationship with his roots and with the community was a sentiment to be cultivated, at least as strongly as that for his vines. So, in those same years, he founded an association named Cantina Sociale Biondi Santi & Compagni (Biondi Santi & Co. Winegrowers’ Cooperative), inviting local producers to join him and encouraging everyone to plant Brunello vineyards to replace those destroyed by phyloxera.

Consequently, casual cultivations gradually gave way to the plantation of compact, or we might even say specialised vineyards: in 1929 the area occupied by rows of Brunello reached a record extension which would never again be equalled until 1980. However, in around 1930, a more destructive wave of phyloxera than the others struck

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Montalcino, devastating most of the association’s vineyards. The depression followed by the war prevented the necessary replanting operations. Tancredi Biondi Santi and his partners did the best they could to keep working but the lack of grapes and consequently wine made the battle rather one-sided and so it was that, after the Second World War, the association disbanded and the members all went their own separate ways.

Tancredi had done everything possible to resist, trying to convince the producers not to be so short-sighted and to look beyond the logic of immediate profit, not to give in to the haste to sell off such a precious asset as that represented by the vineyards, concentrating on the diversification of the products in order to earn some breathing space. Oil was Tancredi’s answer to the crisis and the foundation of the oil-making company Oleificio Sociale di Montalcino was his way of reinforcing, once again, his link with the community. The oil-making company closed many years later following the great frost of 1985. But Brunello was still his obsession. Having understood that the Italian market was still not ready to drink high quality wines, but being convinced that that was the road to pursue, he had tried to open the way for international sales, particularly on the British and US markets. This was a brand new route and far from easy. Two photos taken in 1932 show Tancredi Biondi Santi intent on loading two lorries with cases of bottles of Brunello ready to be sent off to America. His son Franco looks at one of them and says: Where the Town Hall stands today, in Montalcino, the basement housed the wine cellar and storerooms where the wine was kept. This photo was taken there. You can easily recognise the load of Brunello and Chianti on the Fiat 18 BL lorries. The man standing next to the lorries is my father, overseeing the operations and checking that everything is done properly. You can

1932, the long trip made by Brunello to the United States. The cellars of the building which is now the Town Hall were once the headquarters of “Cantina Sociale Biondi Santi e Compagni”. Two Fiat 18 BL, survivors of the First World War, with solid tyres and no front brakes, set off from there. The wine’s journey envisaged the arrival at the Torrenieri railway line and then the trip to the port of Livorno where it boarded a ship headed for New York

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see a door next to the building: that was the door of the primary school I attended from the age of five.

With the advent of fascism, Tancredi Biondi Santi decided to stay away from politics, trying to keep Il Greppo and the Cantina Sociale out of the turbulence characteristic of those years. In 1944, in the thick of the Second World War, after twenty years of business, the Cantina Sociale closed down, as mentioned earlier. So Tancredi was left alone again to cope with a delicate passage in history. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that he no longer had the support of the other producers, because in actual fact he was no longer alone: alongside him, on the frontline in defence of the historical and winegrowing heritage of Biondi Santi, was his son Franco, who had now come of age. The estate had to be rebuilt, the vineyards and the wines, jealously guarded in the cellar, had to be protected. The front was close by and the Germans carried out daily raids, while the Americans advanced slowly from the south, aided by the partisans. The memory of those days is clear and that boy, who now owns Il Greppo, condenses it into this emblematic episode, as Franco Biondi Santi recounted in Kerin O’Keefe’s book: It was winter ’44 and the front was very close. My father, myself and an old and trusted worker had walled up the room where the old Reserves were kept. We worked all night long, practically in the dark, so that no one knew what we were doing. We hid a few hundred precious bottles, from those of 1888

The stand of “Fattoria Il Greppo Biondi Santi” at a national fair of typical 1940 wines, held on the ramparts of the Medicean fort of Siena. The photo shows Tancredi Biondi Santi on the left, with his daughter Tedina.

The following page shows a grape harvest in the 1940s at La Chiusa: Franco Biondi Santi’s sisters are recognisable: the second from the right leaning against the cart is Tedina, while Fiorella is sitting on the cart.

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1965, the display of the Calderai company in Via Roma, Florence.In 1966, the flood left nothing untouched, not even the Brunello Biondi Santi: about ten bottles, which Tancredi replaced for the unlucky shop owner, are now stored in the cellars at Il Greppo, stripped of their labels and still bearing traces of mud.

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to those of 1925. My father’s concern was great and evident: “Either they’ll drink it – he repeated – or they’ll steal it”. Without these old Reserves, which form a real historical memory, it would have been impossible to prove to the world, as we later did, the extraordinary ageing capacity that our Brunello had, and still has.

The Fifties and Sixties, while Italy rose up again and created the foundations for the future economic miracle, were decisive for the consolidation of Brunello as a wine of outstanding quality. Tancredi was able to rely on the full and valuable collaboration of his son Franco, who was taking on an increasingly important role in the production process and in the running of Il Greppo, thus enabling them to establish new relationships, and to perform those indispensable actions to make the estate’s wines known to Italy, which had undergone significant changes as compared with the previous decades. In the best restaurants, wine lists began to circulate and the new bourgeoisie that was being established changed tastes and lifestyles. A particular event makes it easy to understand what was happening, just like and more so than numerous sociological considerations. Franco Biondi Santi tells us about it: In the mid-Fifties, the then President of the Council, Amintore Fanfani, asked for Brunello di Montalcino Biondi Santi to be served at an official lunch at Villa Madama alongside Bianco di Pitigliano. Fanfani was a Christian Democrat from Arezzo who knew our Tuscan wines very well. The same cannot be said for the head of the service who decided to ask the advice of Marco Trimani who, being the owner of a good wine shop in Rome, was also considered an expert. But he, too, was puzzled. The only reliable information on the subject was found in the “Guida gastronomica d’Italia” (Gastronomic Guide of Italy) published by the Touring Club. Having found the Brunello, Fanfani’s man didn’t think twice and hurried off to Florence to buy a few good bottles and try them. According to the story, he paid no less than 950 lire a bottle for it: which was a huge sum at the time, considering that a bottle of Chianti Classico cost 150. But he wouldn’t hear reason and took some bottles with him. After tasting it, he wrote to my father asking him for more information and a pricelist.

Tancredi, who had always had an innate talent for business as well as an undeniable charm and bon ton, didn’t stop at simply replying but travelled in person to Rome, taking with him several bottles which would have convinced even the strictest critics. It is easy to imagine how this story ended: from then on their Brunello was served regularly at official banquets, including those on the other side of the River Tiber.

The Reserves began to show the world the face of that precious wine called Brunello. All the producers, from Calabria to Lombardy, began contacting Tancredi Biondi Santi and his son Franco for all kinds of

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I often look at those old bottles and remember that dreadful winter of 1944, when, with the frontline drawing ever closer, my father decided to wall up the room where they were kept

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advice and opinions. In his book, Burton Anderson writes: “One estate he helped develop was the Fiorano of Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, Prince of Venosa, whose property lies in the outskirts of Rome. Fiorano Rosso, from a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, has long been considered one of Italy’s finest red wines from the classic varieties of Bordeaux”. In addition to good advice, the Prince of Venosa had been offered a taste of a 1946 Reserve, the second made after the closure of the Cantina Sociale. On the 16th of July 1966 the man, who was absolutely bowled over by it, wrote to Tancredi Biondi Santi: Dear Sir, I have thought about you repeatedly since tasting your famous ‘Brunello’ wine of 1946 – which I had never tasted before – a short while ago. I would like to inform you that I found your wine to be of the most superior quality, such as to merit consideration as one of – if not the only?! – great Italian wine, which I would like to describe, in my own way, as a majestic, severe, masculine, medieval red, a “primitive Sienese” to compare it to the art created in the same part of Italy! I wish to express my sincerest congratulations upon your skill and valuable estate and hope that the passion for your most noble wine shall continue to descend “down through the branches” without ceasing.

After that Roman banquet, all the other protagonists of public life wanted Brunello on their tables. The President of the Republic, Giuseppe Saragat, who knew a thing or two about wine, had a 1955 Reserve served to Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Phillip and other British dignitaries at a luncheon held at the Italian Embassy in London in 1969: word passed from mouth to mouth and newspaper to newspaper and, the following year, a bottle of 1888 was sold at auction for over 400 thousand lire to a company which sold wine by mail order, the Club delle Fattorie, which displayed it in its museum. From then on, acknowledgements began to pour in and with the success of this high quality wine came the need to regulate its production: rules – Franco Biondi Santi loves to repeat – that the French had laid down over a hundred years earlier. The national government contacted Tancredi Biondi Santi to formulate the discipline to regulate the production of Brunello together with professor Giovanni Garoglio and Arrigo Musiani, director of the Chianti Colli Senesi Consortium, as well as secretary of the Italian Academy of the Vine and Wine of Siena. That discipline, which gave Brunello the denomination of controlled origin (DOC), generated a controversy that led the Biondi Santis to separate from the other producers who had converged in that Consortium conceived and desired by the Biondi Santis themselves.

1970 was the last year which saw Tancredi Biondi Santi, who was several times grandfather by then, at the helm of the family estate: his daughters Tedina, the first born, and Fiorella, the last, were both married and happy, so his by now mature and expert son Franco became

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In those days, the glue used to stick the labels onto the bottles was made with wheat flour. The problem was that it dried very slowly, so all the bottles had to be kept vertical and, by order of my father, perfectly aligned. Sometimes the alignment was curved and we noticed as soon as Tancredi ironically announced “It’s been windy today…!”

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the estate’s irreplaceable point of reference. Il Greppo was flourishing and the cellars had been reorganised following transferral there from the countryside. During that year, just a few months before he died, Tancredi wanted to spend some time in his wine cellar with his son and dearest friends to see the antique bottles once more, to caress them and smell the old aromas, feeling his wine flowing through his veins. That topping up represented the passing of a testament. Mario Soldati’s writings offer us a remarkable portrait of this man: “Even physically, Tancredi Biondi Santi has all the features of an artist. Now at the age of seventy-six, he is trim with a healthy complexion, strong and delicate at the same time, both nervous and distinguished. A high forehead, twinkling blue eyes, a shrewd smile full of cordiality, but also sudden shadows of sadness, as though distracted by an ongoing dream. Seeing him with his wife, one senses the rarest longing shared by a couple who have always loved each other and who have aged well together ”.

The heir to the complex and age-old Biondi Santi saga is their son, Franco.

His biography has been published by magazines the world over, his obstinate battles have made him famous, even among the general public, people who have nothing to do with winegrowing, and his lifestyle has made him unique at a time when the dominant models are those of mass appeal imposed by the television. A close friend, Count Gelasio Gaetani d’Aragona Lovatelli, writes about him and his family: “In a recent book, the author asks why the town of Montalcino still hasn’t erected a monument in the main square to Ferruccio Biondi Santi, the inventor of Brunello. Franco Biondi Santi is his direct

All the Riserve produced by Tancredi Biondi Santi.

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descendent. The American Indians would say that he is a man who has known many springs. For me, he is a man who has known many grape harvests in the same place”.

An attentive observer of family values, Franco Biondi Santi sets his memories in a bigger picture: I had a happy childhood, filled with love – he says to those who try to go beyond the slightly stereotypical biographies – I remember my primary school and the long walk every day from Il Greppo to the village; I remember the house in Siena, where I lived while attending middle school and where I fell in love with the “Palio”, particularly the Contrada of Istrice; I remember my first trip to Conegliano Veneto where, respecting the family tradition, I was sent to study oenology, resisting just three months before returning to study at the Agrarian School of the Cascine; I remember the grape harvests at the Le Chiuse estate with my sisters and the farmers who came and went with carts full of grapes; I remember my grandfather Ferruccio’s dogs and that he could say “down” to 11 pointers in front of their dinner and they would obey him: those dogs

didn’t even twitch their tails. This was the result of his charisma and outstanding calmness. Both he and my father were great hunters, but I’m not quite so good, because to hunt you have to walk and I’ve never been one for walking.

The passion for dogs is handed down in the family, from father to son.

We currently have three here at Il Greppo: two Maremman Shepherds and a Dachshund, Briciola. Talking about Dachshunds, there’s an anecdote about the centennial of Brunello in 1988, when there were the grandest celebrations in Montalcino and lots of journalists came to Il Greppo, which looked like a flowery bunker, due to the presence of Amintore Fanfani. The journalists included Pino Khail, writer for “Civiltà del bere” (Drinking Lifestyle), and he described the great event, starting with the fact that the guests had been received by the lady of the house, my wife Maria Floria, and by a delightful little dachshund with an “unheard of” personality. Her name was Margherita and she was Briciola’s grandma. Sometimes

Until the 1960s, it was easy to grow grapes in Italy, and wine was considered to be a poor drink. Tancredi Biondi Santi, a nationally operational winegrowing consultant, was particularly bothered by the fact that high quality Italian wines were not protected by the government, while France had begun to defend its wines over one hundred years earlier Several internationally prestigious Italian cellars, starting with those of the great Piedmontese tradition of Barolo and Barbaresco and continuing to those of the South, had to be defended. To make up for these severe shortcomings on the part of the government, long before the Denomination of Origin was granted to Brunello di Montalcino (1966), Tancredi, being a good friend of the director of the “Consorzio del Chianti Colli Senesi” Mr Musiani, secretary of the “Accademia Italiana della Vite e del Vino” (Italian Academy

of the Vine and Wine), succeeded in obtaining a stamp bearing the she-wolf of Siena, symbol of the Consorzio del Chianti Colli Senesi, with the serial number and registration of the Brunello di Montalcino printed at the bottom: at least a Consortium officially certified that that bottle of wine was Brunello and defended it as a quality product. The legendary harvest of 1955, bottled in 1960, was the first to bear it. When, in 1961, it was disclosed that the name Brunello was about to be exploited, the Biondi Santi family realised it was taking part in an important match, but it was too late. They should have patented the name before so many people had gained an interest in it, so it became a collective trademark. The label designed many years before by Tancredi, and created by the painter from Siena, Zanti, with the name “Brunello” in large print and “Biondi Santi” in small print, underwent a dramatic alteration: the inversion of the two terms, to give Biondi Santi value as a trademark.

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translations generate the funniest mistakes: in the English edition of the story, Margherita had become a “little lady who was a bit hard of hearing!” who accompanied the lady of the house.

Franco Biondi Santi remembers everything. He has memories of stories about his family which date back to the days of the Illuminists, dotting the decisive moments of the centuries he has been told about, and which as a consequence he has, in some way, experienced, with words that spring to life immediately.

His adolescence and youth are those of a young man from the

Top - Ferruccio Biondi Santi orders “down alla pappa” to eleven pointers who waited for his “pull”.

In the oval above and on the following page, his son Tancredi with some of his dogs.

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Tuscan farming bourgeoisie. While completing his Agrarian studies in Florence, encouraged by his uncle Virgilio Buscalupi, professor of music at the Cherubini Institute in Florence, he began to cultivate another passion which was to accompany him throughout his life: music. In this peaceful atmosphere, made up of days characterised by sport, friends, study and fun, the Second World War broke out.

In January 1943 he was called up and experienced, like most others of his age, a war which had been imposed and with which he disagreed. With the fall of fascism on the 25th of July 1943, the whole of Franco’s battalion was transferred to Genoa and then to the French border. On the 8th of September he and his companions awoke to find themselves alone in the army camp: everyone else had escaped.

We had no radio so didn’t know what was going on – he remembers as though it were yesterday – we didn’t know that the Italian government had signed an armistice with the Allies and that the Nazi troops had occupied the territory. To avoid being accused of deserting, at first I decided not to escape, the way all the others had; then I realised that, if I didn’t want to risk being shot by the Germans, the best thing to do was try and get back home. The first thing I did was hand in my rifle to the Carabinieri, to do things by the book. On the border I met a companion from Siena, Bruno Fabbri, with whom I set off along the road home, watching out for German raids and jumping from one freight train to the next. It was hard, really hard, but in the end I made it (my companion stopped in Siena) back to Montalcino. I remember the first thing I did was to head off home: in my mind’s eye I can still see my father waiting for me at Il Greppo as I walk down the cypress-lined avenue.

At the end of the war, life went back to normal: his studies, his graduation in Agrarian and Forestry Sciences from Perugia University, helping his father to make and promote his wine. During one of these activities, in 1947, at the Mostra Mercato dei Vini Tipici e Pregiati di Siena (Siena Trade Fair of Typical and Prized Wines), Franco Biondi Santi found himself having to manage the exhibition, sharing the stand with the Petri family, owners of a farm near Montalcino, close to Il Greppo. It was there that, after such a long time, he saw Petri’s beautiful daughter, Maria Floria, nicknamed “Boba”, again. They fell in love at once. And stayed in love forever: we began going out together and never stopped – he still remembers, emotionally. They were married on the 15th of June 1949 in Monte Oliveto, in the abbey to which they are still indissolubly linked. In the June of the following year, their first heir, Jacopo, was born.

In 1948 the Biondi Santis had inherited the family estate at Pienza, owned by their aunt Bianca, daughter of Paolina: Franco took over its management, simultaneously running Maria Floria’s family estate,

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S.M.A.B., which built farm machinery, as well as I Pieri, his mother-in-law’s farm. As Franco Biondi Santi told in the book by Kerin O’Keefe: In the 1950s and part of the 1960s, I worked intensely as I managed several different family activities including the farm I inherited along with my father, and of course the winemaking activities at Greppo, as well as my wife’s estate and her company which produced agricultural equipment. Thursdays were particularly busy as I had to travel all over Tuscany. I would leave home in Pienza very early for Grosseto, to go to the agricultural market. I would take the road that went by Monte Amiata where I had heavy equipment working on several projects contracted by the regional government, L’Ente Maremma. To do all this I had to drive over 500 kilometers in a tiny Fiat “Topolino” or little mouse, on the nearly impassable roads of those days…but I was young and in love! In the years of the reconstruction and the boom, the whole of Italy was in a frenzy. In one of the most successful books on that period, “Poveri ma belli” (Poor but Beautiful), with just a few figures Marta Boneschi indicates the enormous national economic boost and the new art of manufacturing which we can summarise like this: in ’58 the balance of the industrial activity started to become dizzying; the Italian manufacture of refrigerators went from 18,500 pieces in 1951 to 370 thousand in 1957, placing Italy in third place in the world, after the United States and Japan, while that of typewriters rose from 151 thousand in 1957 to 652 thousand in 1961. But it was the production of automobiles that experienced the biggest increase: in 1959 the figure reached 470 thousand, double that of 1953, and the merit was undoubtedly of the two little Fiats, the Cinquecento and the Seicento. “In 1958, 1.4 million cars were in circulation, ten times the number in ’46. Without counting the scooters – the Vespa, the Lambretta and the industrious Ape – which became very popular during those years: there are as many brands of motorcycles as there are of brilliantine, i.e.: over a hundred, so much so that a grand and refined politician like De Gasperi was to say during a meeting: “It is thanks to my government that the people have motor scooters”.

Houses were built and electricity was brought to the countryside. The television arrived and the RAI entered the households, educating the Italians at least as much, and more so in some cases, than schools: mass consumerism arrived. It was in this context, in 1958, that the young couple’s second daughter, Alessandra, was born, and Franco Biondi Santi, who lived this season to the full, both in his work and private life, made some of his most important decisions. In 1964, when Maria Floria’s mother died, the estate in Pienza was sold, including the cardinal’s palace in the village, and the family moved to I Pieri, the farming estate near Il Greppo, increasing the time devoted to tending the Biondi Santi estate. Being completely involved in that atmosphere

meant working hard but also enjoying the rewards of the status and new social practices linked with it: they went to the seaside, but with a boat; they travelled beyond the national borders and even outside Europe; they held parties or went to the parties held by their friends; they went skiing, when possible to Cortina. When he thinks back to those days, he looks and then looks again at the walking stick made of cornel he’s carried ever since: I bought it in Cortina. Everyone knows I love skiing. But I’ve always been an irrational skier, due to the lack of time. I used to go to Cortina for 10 days and I’d spend every one skiing, backwards and forwards across the slopes. In ’64 I endured a bad fall and broke my thighbone. At that time they used to keep you resting with your leg in plaster for three months. Then they brought me home to Siena, in Via Montanini 101, at Palazzo Chigi Zondadari opposite the Church of Sant’Andrea, in the Contrada of Istrice, which is my Contrada.

Franco Biondi Santi flanked his father in almost all the estate’s managerial activities, until his death in 1970. Following in his father’s footsteps was like following his destiny through knowledge acquired since childhood. Once he had become an adult, he learned all the secrets and strategies for producing wine and promoting it. After his father’s death, he was well aware that the market had changed and

Franco Biondi Santi portrayed with his sister Fiorella (left) and wife Maria Floria (right), known by her friends as “Boba”.

The two photos at the top show Franco Biondi Santi as a child and a young man. Below - Franco Biondi Santi in a recent photo with his oldest son Jacopo.

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that in the new society of mass consumerism and tourism, prized wines like Brunello were in great demand. He also knew that the world had become smaller, that it was necessary to know and travel the whole of Italy, Europe and beyond. At Vinitaly in 1974, he received the Grand Medal of Cangrande and, the following year, the Gold Medal for Merit of Agricultural Technique awarded by the Ente Fiera dell’Agricoltura (Agriculture Fair Organisation) of Foggia. During those years, from 1972 to 1980, he was part of the board of directors of the Istituto Sperimentale per l’Enologia (Experimental Institute for Oenology) of Asti and, from 1980, member of the Tasting Commission at Siena Chamber of Commerce. In 1984 he was chairman of the Wine and Food Institute of New York, which promotes and enhances the value of Italian wines in the United States. In 1985, Brunello Biondi Santi won the title of Wine of the Year, awarded by the national association of Italian wine stores, Vinarius.

The acknowledgements increased, as did the commitments. The international press paid considerable attention to his work, starting with the magazine “National Geographic”, which, in 1974, devoted it a large amount of space in the issue on the new Italian renaissance. The fame of Biondi Santi’s wines was spreading across Europe and the world. The more he travelled the world, the better he got to know places, wines and people, and the more he fell in love with his homeland, that landscape which had nourished him since childhood and which he had cultivated as an adult. The story written in the landscape, in the scent of the earth and of the wines that are made there is an age-old story. Franco Biondi Santi drifts off, faraway, almost mystically, when he talks about his wines and his land: Our wines aren’t characterised by a single perfume. Those made by my grandfather, which are over a hundred years old, are different from those made by my father. Mine are different again and all this is due to the difference in age of the Reserves produced in different decades. The attachment to the estate is an attachment to its air, to the views and to the auroras. Just out of interest: there is no sunset at Il Greppo, because the sun here disappears half an hour before, covered by the hills exposed to our west, and the windows and gates are white because, when there are red sunsets, with the red clouds the air becomes pink and the gates automatically take on the same colour. But at dawn… at dawn there are shades of pink and the clouds are blue. Or were they blue? Everywhere you look nowadays, you can see an increasing amount of brown, the brown of the motorways, although here, luckily, we have been spared to a certain extent. If I think of all the effort I put into preventing the construction of the Montelandi dump, I feel satisfied and I wonder: if they had built it as they intended, would Montalcino have the recognition it boasts today?

With this same spirit in his heart, in 1985 he founded the association of the Amici di Sant’Antimo (Friends of Sant’Antimo), proving, once again, his desire to defend a shared cultural and spiritual heritage.

The prestige of Brunello kept on growing and in 1988 Franco Biondi Santi, accompanied by his son Jacopo and by the mayor of Montalcino Mario Bindi, took an 1888 Reserve to the Quirinale and gave it to the President of the Republic Francesco Cossiga, in the year of the centennial celebrations of this wine, which was topped up for the last time in 1985. The monarchy has to be kept on a par with the Republic and so, in 1991, King Karl-Gustav of Sweden visited the estate at Il Greppo in person, after receiving a gift of a bottle of Brunello Riserva 1891 from Franco Biondi Santi.

In the meantime his children grew up, got married and made Boba and Franco grandparents. The first grandchild was the son of their second child, Alessandra, who had married Baron Ferdinando Miceli di Serradileo: they named him Gregorio and he had the honour, in 1989, of being christened at Saint Peter’s Church in Rome, by His Holiness Pope John Paul II.

The second grandchild to grace the family was Clio, daughter of their son Jacopo and Francesca Tagliabue. The couple went on to have two sons, Tancredi and Clemente, named after their forefathers.

In 1994 – on the 28th of September to be precise – our host organised what was to be described as the “wine tasting of the century”, in

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which 15 Biondi Santi reserves were presented, covering 100 years of the history of the wine and the family, from 1888 to 1988. In 1999 “Wine Spectator” not only classified the 1955 Brunello Riserva Biondi Santi among the 12 best wines of the 20th century, it also dedicated an article by James Suckling to the Biondi Santis, entitled: “Where would Italy be without the grand old wines of Biondi Santi?”. In 2001, Franco Biondi Santi won the Wine Oscar for best winemaking estate and, in May 2005, having finally entered the Consortium of Brunello di Montalcino, presented a motion in defence of the current production regulations for Brunello, which envisaged the use of 100% Sangiovese. His proposal was unanimously approved because the rigour of the vinification of this wine means that it is not perfectly balanced when young, yet perhaps this is what makes it so excellent and perfect for long periods of ageing.

Franco Biondi Santi is no ordinary man. On one hand, he is strongly linked to the past, to tradition, while on the other, he cannot help but be curious about the future. It’s the present he isn’t so thrilled about. He is an elegant man who spends the winter roaming around his land in a Casentino wool coat which, only on these occasions, replaces the Loden coat he usually “lives in”. He is a liberal, in the Malagodi style; he reads lots of newspapers, doesn’t watch much television, but enjoys playing chess on the iPhone given to him by his grandchildren. He often listens to the advice of his wife Maria Floria, who is busy transforming all their homes and farms to maintain them, improve them and make them productive, using the practice of “Casa Vacanza” (Holiday Home), an offer aimed at high-quality international tourism which knows how to appreciate a good landscape, just like a good wine, and which seeks a life lived to the rhythm of nature through direct contact with the land. Watching Maria Floria and Franco together is like hearing echoes of the words written by Mario Soldati for Franco’s father Tancredi and mother Anna: “Seeing him with his wife, one senses the rarest longing shared by a couple who have always loved each other and who have grown old together. Believe me, in this life, which tends to be so fierce, there is nothing so beautiful and consoling”.

Having families like those of the Santis and Biondis behind him, ancestors who fought with Garibaldi, has forcefully marked this proud and austere man’s profile, strongly linking his personal story to that of his family and that of his family to a story of greater breadth, the story which comprises everything in the passage of time. You can hear it when he speaks: I’m lucky to have met my wife and to have celebrated sixty years of marriage with her. On the 15th of June 2009, we celebrated our 60th anniversary with a Holy Mass in the chapel at Il Greppo, said by the monks of Sant’Antimo. It was really moving.

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The love of my wife has transformed our houses and that love is due to the fact that we were born in and have lived in them.

He doesn’t say much about the things that are happening, he prefers to talk about them at the Consortium or with his friends, and he doesn’t take part in the game of pompous declarations. He isn’t interested in making a row. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have his own precise idea of what’s going on, starting with the unpleasant affair that has recently brought Brunello into the newspapers for the damage caused by certain improvised and dishonest producers: I think we’re lucky that what happened did actually happen. The chaff has been separated from the wheat. Much of what has happened is due, on one hand, to a lack of preparation, considering the extreme ease of producing wine, and, on the other, to the absence of real government regulations to defend high quality production. In 1955, 12 years before the Consortium was set up, my father, who lived this wine with extreme intensity, being very worried, undertook, with his friend Musiani, to immediately establish rules to defend Brunello. Montalcino was part of the Colli Senesi district and Musiani proposed to give my father the “Colli Senesi” stamp with the words “Brunello di Montalcino” written underneath. This was because he understood and wanted other producers to understand that it was wrong to focus on large amounts to the detriment of quality.

He has had and continues to have many passions. Nowadays

they’re called hobbies, but in his case we think that the term is a little reductive. We aren’t talking about women or even engines, but of mountains and the sea, particularly of sailing. Lots of passions, but, at this point in time, more than the odd sacrifice, too: In the past I had a yacht, a 12.40 metre boat. I remember buying it under pressure from my son Jacopo, who used to be a good yachtsman. We made various crossings and also took part in races. I remember one in particular, when we sailed down to Porto Cervo from Corsica and ran into a dreadful wind at Bocche di Bonifacio, so much so that we had to hoist the storm jibs. I was also passionate about my video camera at that time and had a Super8: I had myself tied to the mast like Ulysses, to film the raging winds. I had very little time to dedicate to yachting. This is why I sold the 12.40 and then the 4.70, which was physically very hard work. I spend as much time as I can at the seaside from mid-July, when the work in the vineyards is over, until mid-August when the delivery companies start moving again and busy wine sales start up again.

Franco Biondi Santi spends most of his time at Il Greppo because he loves his work and because, for him, it is the centre of the world. He has made his great reds here, stored those made by his lofty ancestors here, enjoyed the slow progress of wisdom here and become grandfather here, taking pleasure in being it and in transmitting to his grandchildren, along with his wife, the values he believes in

Franco Biondi Santi portrayed in 1991 talking to his staff next to one of the angular vineyards which, with their south/south-easterly exposure, crown Greppo hill.

Maria Floria and Franco Biondi Santi celebrate their fiftieth and sixtieth wedding anniversaries in the chapel at Il Greppo. On both occasions, a bottle dating back over one hundred years, the Riserva 1891, was uncorked.

I still have two bottles of 1888, five of 1891, three of 1925 and twenty-two of 1945: they’re in my private cellar, together with the rare bottles of Moscadello, the last harvest of which was carried out by my father in 1969

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most: patience and the esteem of others. I teach them to love others as much as themselves. Besides, this is a way to make as few enemies as possible, and patience is fundamental when you are in contact with nature. I have four grandchildren: Gregorio is 22, Clio – who’s studying in London – is 19, then there’s Tancredi, who’s 17, and Clemente, who’s 15. They’re all very tall, they look like their parents, my children, who are both excellent parents.

The real mystery lies in understanding the very strong link with Brunello possessed not only by Franco, but by all the Biondi Santis, those who have been part of and those who are only just approaching the family wine tradition. Perhaps these words, written by Franco Biondi Santi in a chapter of the book “Franco Biondi Santi: The Gentleman of Brunello” by Kerin O’Keefe entitled “My brother Brunello” describe, better than any others, this unstoppable passion for Brunello and the love of his land: I’ve lived my long life in admiration and unconditional affection for my father who began teaching me his philosophy of Brunello, which he loved greatly, while I was still a young boy. He had, and I still have today, bottles produced by my grandfather Ferruccio in 1888 and 1891 as well as later vintages, all of which are still in wonderful condition from an enological viewpoint. They are evidence of the unique quality and innate characteristics of a great indigenous variety: sangiovese grosso. This variety was the object of many years of research and experiments carried out by generations of agriculturists and enlightened enologists from my family that were years ahead of their time, starting with Clemente, Jacopo, Ferruccio and lastly my father Tancredi. In the early 1900s a few other Brunellos were produced, but the absence of traditions, enological knowledge and longevity completely crushed the production. My father continued making our Brunello, which at the time was a tiny production but of very high quality, following the traditions he learned from my grandfather that respected the essential characteristics of the wine and allowed it to have a great longevity. He considered our Brunello to be another son; he looked after it and closely followed every stage of its evolution with meticulous care. I was born in the same year my father began running Greppo on his own after he and his brother Gontrano and sister Caterina divided the assets they had inherited. I learned under his guidance how to make and love Brunello, and I shared my father’s anxiety as well as his pleasure in appreciating the wonderful improvements in quality that aging gave to the Riservas. So it is that decade after decade, I’ve grown old together with my “brother Brunello” : while he gets better and better, I have slowly declined. Yet this is what the good Lord has in store for all of us.

A typical bunch of Sangiovese grosso clone BBS 11. The berries bear the important presence of bloom, a waxy, honeycomb-shaped structure which captures the cells of yeasts carried by the wind and fundamental to alcoholic fermentation.

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So, decade by decade, I’ve aged along with my “brother Brunello”, but while he improves all the time…I just deteriorate. But then that’s God’s way

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TThe Tenuta del Greppo, which has always been indicated on the cadastral maps of Montalcino, stretches across the hills (at an altitude of 385/507 metres above sea level) facing southeast of Montalcino, and enjoys an ideal microclimate and soil for the production of long-lasting and aromatic red wines. These are the words of Franco Biondi Santi, taken from the lecture held on the 8th of February 2001 at the Georgofili Academy. A simple and precise business card to say something equally simple: our wine is good and it ages so well because it is born here, in this place made so special by its soil and climate, this place which is made unique by nature’s gifts and the patient care of man. The Il Greppo estate lies along the road from Montalcino to Sant’Antimo and occupies an area of 47 hectares: the eye runs along the unsurfaced road lined with cypresses that leads to the villa, surrounded by rows of vines and the silhouettes of other farmhouses in the distance. The building, currently covered with Ampelopsis, was built in the 18th century by Tullio Canali, whose daughter Petronilla married Luigi Santi, leading to the inheritance of the villa which was to become the family symbol. It is a typical 18th century villa, with large rooms on the ground floor looking out onto the lawns; with upper floors where, besides the bedrooms, there are small rooms for

CHApTER TwO

IL gREppO AND THE pRODUCTION OF BRUNELLO

ON THE ROAD FROM MONTALCINO TO SANT’ANTIMO STANDS THE vILLA SURROUNDED BY SANgIOvESE vINEYARDS

Il Greppo

The building of Il Greppo, now clad with Ampelopsis, was built in the 18th century by Tullio Canali, whose daughter, Petronilla, married Luigi Santi and inherited the villa which became our family’s symbolic location

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conversation or playing music, as well as the little terrace which offers a splendid view of the rising sun. The thing that strikes visitors most however, is the large fireplace that dominates the kitchen. G. Canessa, having admired it, described it as follows in 1980, in the “Guida del Chianti” (Guide of the Chianti): “But the thing that amazed me the most in this villa, beside the exceptional wine, was the kitchen with its big monumental fireplace, built in 1910 by the architect Spighi. The aforementioned architect was obviously passionate about the construction of fireplaces (another of his beautiful conceptions, with a circular base and conical hood, can be found just a few steps away in the same villa), and he had a most genial idea, developing the shapes and using perfectly chosen materials: stone, oak and terracotta tiles for the huge hood, which covers the entire room like a grand cloak and under which there are numerous ovens, a hearth for the pot hanging from a pagoda-shaped canopy and the benches and tables set around it. A high wooden skirting runs along the back wall, broken up by two big windows, almost like a monastic choir and as if, instead of a kitchen, it was the main altar of a cathedral”. We ought to remember that while he was creating the designs for Il Greppo, Spighi was also working on the consolidation of Pienza Cathedral and on some restoration projects at Sant’Antimo.The “big kitchen” at Il Greppo reflects the typical structure of convent kitchens, so much so that when Father Andrea Forest, Prior of the Abbey of Sant’Antimo, comes to spend a few days with us, this is where he likes to converse, next to a blazing fire and with a glass of old Reserve. Since its distant origins, only small changes have been made to the villa and to the neighbouring structures, such as the reconstruction of the wine cellar, organised by Franco Biondi Santi after a few years. “But everything at Il Greppo has something miraculous about it. The red brick villa, covered in rambling plants, is incorporated into the estate and the vineyards are right outside, all around it, in view of the immensity and distance of the Valdorcia. Even without the Alps and without the sea, this is a landscape which strikes one immediately for its grandiosity” says Mario Soldati in “Vino al Vino” (Wine to Wine).It’s easy to match up Montalcino with wine, extremely easy: history comes to your aid and anecdotes help you. As far back as the 16th century, the Bolognese monk Leandro Alberti presented Montalcino as a place “highly renowned for the good wines obtained from those pleasant hills”. Not to mention the legend featuring Biagio di Montluc, who, during the siege of Montalcino (as told by the “Historie”), is said to have rubbed wine onto his cheeks every morning so that the people wouldn’t notice how pale he was. Then there is Clemente VII,

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who used wine to make delicious soups “in the season of the North Wind and of the good fig”. Stories, legends, anecdotes: Montalcino has always been on the lips – in the truest sense of the word – of those who love red wine.However, writing about Brunello, an admirable creation much closer to us, more recent and easier to document, is another thing. It is a creation which is largely due to the work of Clemente Santi and Ferruccio Biondi Santi, passionate winegrowers. Let’s go back, like in the sequence of a black and white film, to the mid-19th century, with the aid of documents and Franco’s memory, refreshed systematically by reading papers, books and diaries. In those years, phyloxera raged in Europe. Ferruccio, on the strength of the extensive winegrowing experience of his maternal grandfather, Clemente Santi, selected vines from his vineyards which produced

coloured grapes with very thick skin and well structured must, vinifying it without the addition of other grape varieties to create wines which he believed would age well. He then grafted the buds taken from those mother plants to wild American vines which were able to resist phyloxera. For five grape harvests, Franco Biondi Santi, Ferruccio’s grandson, together with Professors Casini and Bandinelli of the Faculty of Agrarian Science of Florence, selected no less than 40 different vines until they found the best one, BBS 11 (Brunello Biondi Santi 11), i.e.: vine number 11.Those young green vines were able to grow stronger because they were planted right there, in that corner of paradise where the area’s soil and climate were perfectly suited to the needs of Sangiovese. Franco Biondi Santi explained this clearly, with details to be read attentively, in his Lesson at the Georgofili Academy in 2001, talking about Il Greppo:

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The estate, born thanks to the organic and rational management of Ferruccio Biondi Santi, who had had the merit of grafting the wild American wines with the Sangiovese clone he had selected, stretches across the 47 hectares of Il Greppo and the 105 hectares of I Pieri, with 24 hectares of specialised vineyards cultivated with Sangiovese grosso (...) All the excessively fertile soils are rejected, preferring more stony soils with exposure to south, south-east, east and north-east. The remaining areas are cultivated with olive trees, seed crops and woods. From the analysis and observation of the Simplified Lithological Map of the municipality of Montalcino, we could say that the land that makes up the Il Greppo estate is particularly suitable for planting with Sangiovese: lean soils rich in heavy stone, with a microclimate that tends to be dry while the grapes ripen, which fully enhance the perfumes and structure of Brunello. The climate is characterised by big differences between daytime and night time temperatures, accentuated in the months of September and October, during the grape harvest: this is what enables the vines exposed there to fully express all the characteristic perfumes of Brunello di Montalcino del Greppo.And nature at Il Greppo follows its course without interference: there’s no trace of herbicides, due to the fear of altering the clones of the alcoholic fermentation yeasts which come largely from the soils. You understand this when Franco Biondi Santi wanders, in his faithful Casentino coat with the wolf fur collar and walking stick, among the rows of big shoots, when he feels the leaves with their fine dentation. He remembers the origin and stock of every row. Are these the 1936 plants? you ask, your curiosity piqued by his relationship with nature. Half are from ‘36, vines planted by my father, after excavating the vineyard with picks, while that on the right is a vineyard planted after the Second World War, in 1947-48, excavated with explosives made by a firm from Rome which managed the arms left over from the war and sold the systems needed for this type of excavation. They are precious vines. Vines which make it possible to make wines destined to the grand Reserves. There aren’t many plants from ’36 because they have been gradually replanted while this is original, these are the vines that make it possible to make the Reserves in exceptional years, where no one’s concerned with the quantity of grapes produced, all we need is a few bottles to project the image of Brunello del Greppo into the future, via a great wine which bears the sign of longevity. In recent years, rosebushes have been planted at the head of rows of vines all over the place in Montalcino: this choice has nothing to do with the beauty of the flower - although a certain type of aesthetic beauty, that used in glossy postcards so to speak, has its importance in this age of mass tourism and consumerism – but rather with the fact that the rose is a sort of attractive sentinel which stands guard against a dreaded enemy: powdery mildew.

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However, the care and attention devoted to the vines go way beyond these delightful customs, and implicate constant defence against the reasons of nature, the ability to speak up when someone, driven by particular interests or speculative ambitions, offends it. The whole planet can be saved if everyone takes care of their own little field. Franco Biondi Santi explains this well when he describes how, at Il Greppo, pathologies are fought: - downy mildew, for example, is a moderately intense calamity which can be combated more easily; powdery mildew on the other hand is undoubtedly much more damaging, but its threat is effectively kept at bay in summer with repeated pulverulent sulphur-based treatments that resist water; green pruning also allows constant airing of the bunches of grapes limiting the damage due to climatic events that favour the onset of grey rot; the area around Il Greppo is not affected by grape moth attacks and those by spider mites and leafhoppers are rare: spider mites were weakened 10 years ago with the introduction into the vineyards, during winter pruning, of vine shoots full of phytoseiid eggs, phytoseiids being predators of spider mites.In wine, as in all living organisms, quality and longevity are bound to the place where the vines grow, to the environment where the wine is made. Obviously the strength and character of the people are sensed, but those of the territory are even more influential. There’s a document, drawn up by an Interministerial Commission of the Italian Government in 1932, and recognised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, in which Ferruccio is assigned the paternity of his creation with those precise characteristics indicated by him. His was an experiment carried out with a mass selection on the characteristics of the wine and the bunches of grapes, on the colours of the berries, the sugar structure found during tasting, an indivisible link between grape variety, territory and person. This is the relationship that lies at the basis of what I call Sangiovese del Greppo, because it came from the continuity of this system. My grandfather, my father and then myself, have always taken the buds from the mother plants. Everything is linear. It takes simplicity, logic and patience. The grape harvest is one of the moments when the vines and grapes enter into direct contact with man. Care and precision are necessary, and everything has to happen at the right time and according to the familiar methods, which have been applied for years and years. The grapes harvested by hand and meticulously selected are passed through a stalking and crushing machine. Temperature is controlled constantly to ensure that it never rises above the 30/31 degrees necessary for fermentation. To avoid altering the characteristics of the product, no selected yeasts are used during vinification, only natural autochthonous yeasts. Franco Biondi Santi has experienced

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an enormous number of grape harvests but there’s one he remembers in particular: I was a boy and I’d been stung in the mouth by a bee; my tongue swelled up and I was about to suffocate because I’d been running along between the carts during the grape harvest at La Chiusa. They saved me by putting a finger in my mouth.The grapes harvested are brought into the cellar and inseminated with the fermenting must taken from the grapes harvested in a pre-harvest a few days earlier. After two or three weeks, the wine is drawn off without using the pressed material. This is a decisive moment which our master Brunello maker wants to explain in detail: When it is drawn off, at the end of fermentation, after about 12-15 days, the wine is still quite young, but nicely coloured. It has to continue fermenting in barrels because it still contains some sugar: the whole cellar is filled with a special perfume of boiled chestnuts. This aroma is linked to the sugars still contained in the new wine (flower), and disappears as soon as fermentation is over. You can tell that fermentation is over even without analysing the sugars, as soon as that perfume disappears. It smells of chestnuts because we are in the chestnut level curve. I make sure that the grapes are harvested properly and preserved perfectly during their journey to the cellar because, if the grapes weren’t in perfect condition, I wouldn’t have the wines I do. Right? As time goes by, the red colour of the wine becomes finer and acquires

an orangey hue. The colour of the Brunello, but also its perfume, are unmistakable.It’s true, it has an unmistakable, intense perfume, which varies from year to year, but which tends to be fruity and reminiscent of leather, bark and numerous other perfumes characterised by strong notes. When it is in the barrels, it almost completely loses its fruitiness to make way for vanilla and iris. These transformations continue even after the wine has been bottled and it is in the bottles that the perfumes mature and become characteristic. Its flavour is a combination of its many characteristics, like its strength, slightly tannic presence and vivacity. It leaves the mouth dry, and is harmonious and persistent.This land is my land, sang Woody Guthrie, the great American singer songwriter. This land is my land, repeats Franco Biondi Santi tirelessly, when he sees history and tradition being threatened (as in the case of the aforementioned scandal involving certain Brunello producers in the law courts) and also when it’s time to boast a little: Montalcino is very important to me. This is my land, I was born here at Il Greppo, almost in the cellar. As a child I used to walk to school, which was in the centre of the town. And I have fought, as proven by numerous vicissitudes, to prevent damage to its great tradition. There have been years in which, without any scruples, certain people have swooped like hawks onto our most valuable asset, Brunello. On several Shoot thinning.

Raising the three pairs of wires of the classic upwards-trained vertical-trellis system, to support the new spring shoots that grow from the vine.

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occasions I’ve thought about the fact that I didn’t join the Consortium immediately and I’ve wondered whether that choice was the right one. It was a very particular time: the days of sharecropping were coming to an end and there was still no real wine culture, so to speak. People made wine and tried to sell as much as they could, because the new law, law 930 of 1967, finally allowed the area’s wines to bear a first quality mark. There were those who wanted to exploit the new situation immediately, marketing the product without paying much attention to the real issues linked to the defence of quality. Many of today’s problems can probably be traced back to then, to that burst of populism which conquered Montalcino and its people. But winegrowing is one thing, and wine culture is something totally different, as my very close friend Nanni Guiso often used to remind me. The rift between myself, along with my father, and the other producers came due to the regulations which we had worked long and hard on, particularly the time needed to age Brunello, which the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry established as four years of cellaring, all spent in wooden barrels. We had the most heated arguments with all the others because they wanted to shorten this time. The conclusion was that we didn’t join the Brunello Consortium. Then things went the way they did. You only have to read about what’s been happening in the past few months to see how much malpractice has gone on to the detriment of our wine and our town due to poor decision-making. This is why I decided, a few years ago, to join the Consortium and take part in the meetings: at times like these the disputes of the past don’t matter, not even different contingent evaluations matter. What does

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I was born at Il Greppo in 1922 and began working in the cellar in 1930. My first real grape harvest was in 1940. No other farmer anywhere in Tuscany has sixty-nine harvests behind him, yet many of them talk about wine today

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matter, is being able to voice an opinion on important issues that can guarantee a future to our way of making wine. Montalcino is a veritable world which hosts big climatic differences and very different characteristics between one zone and the next. Someone has even talked about the “Continent of Montalcino”. This could lead to what is known as “zoning”, the result being wines with an evident link to the actual micro-zone of production. It’s true – confirms Franco Biondi Santi – in Montalcino there are huge differences in climate due to that watershed that separates us from the torrid heat of Maremma, our high hill area. The French have already carried out this kind of zoning, despite the fact that they don’t have the differences we have here. The way I see it, the zone facing Maremma produces wines that are more similar to the Californian style red wines, being very full-bodied and structured, but low on acid and not particularly suited to long periods of ageing. I think that it will take another ten generations or so to achieve this kind of zoning. In the meantime, the solution could be to create a distinction between exposures and altitudes, because it’s one thing to have south-westerly exposure, which is the hottest, at an altitude of 100 metres and another to have it at 550 metres, exposed east and consequently with a big difference between night time and daytime temperatures when the sun rises during the harvesting period.Vineyards are taking up an increasing amount of space on the hills, yet the woods continue, fortunately, to reign supreme. In his book on Montalcino, Ilio Raffaelli highlights the decisive role that this type of environment has had on the economic and social development in the area. Until just a few years ago, about 12 thousand hectares of territory within the municipality of Montalcino were covered in wood: oaks, holm oaks, turkey oaks, arbatus, strawberry trees, erica, chestnuts and acacias. On the edges of the woods there were extensive areas which, in the days of sharecropping, were dedicated to grazing, where the Mediterranean scrub blended and merged with wild berries, broom, walnuts, figs and numerous other varieties of fruit trees. Even before then, there were real woods made up of wild olive trees overlooking the farms. There were trees with trunks, some of them almost a thousand years old, that had witnessed the passing of history. Nowadays there is little of that world left here, although the cultivation of olives is gradually recovering. Franco Biondi Santi is mindful of the changing environment. He is convinced that the wood is one of the keys to the fact that Brunello is Brunello and clearly remembers “the era of oil”: Montalcino was a great producer of oil, possibly even before it became a great producer of wine. But the dreadful frost of January 1985 changed many things, even the landscape.

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TThe wood was also chosen in the 19th century, the century of Brunello. They could have chosen the chestnut that populates the woods on neighbouring Monte Amiata, a wood which is ideal for barrels and is also cheap. But chestnut is full of tannin and tannin, when present in excessive amounts, leaves a strong and long-lasting mark. Franco Biondi Santi explains the choice made by his ancestors and approved and re-confirmed by himself: No, chestnut wasn’t suitable. The oldest barrels I have in the cellar were bought by Ferruccio Biondi Santi in around 1870-1880 and they are still used for the Reserves. Five barrels made of special wood, Slavonian oak. Modern international oenology usually prefers French oak, which is very aromatic and has lots of tannins, as well as many different perfumes and tastes to be released. Slavonian oak on the other hand comes from Northern Yugoslavia and is a rather neutral wood, only slightly tannic and, when grown in mountain woods, characterised by a delicate scent of vanilla. Slavonian oak was chosen because it is the best for ageing wines without conveying too much tannin to them. Franco Biondi Santi often finds himself comparing the different paths and different methods that have led to the creation of different types of wine in France and others in Italy, in particular in Montalcino and on his estate, Il Greppo. A profound knowledge of the history of winegrowing emerges in these cases: In France an enormous

CHApTER THREE

A SpECIAL wOOD FOR BRUNELLO

THE OAk USED TO MAkE THE BARRELS COMES FROM SLAvONIA

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amount of hard work has been carried out to make high quality wines. They began selecting the grape varieties centuries ago, but they had a small problem: there wasn’t enough sun to ripen the grapes fully and consequently give them the right perfumes and flavours deriving directly from nature. They found a remedy to the problem in the cellar, with sugaring: alcohol was fundamental to give the wine balance. Even though the grapes weren’t fully ripe and therefore lacked sugar, they succeeded in selecting grapes rich in colour, so that that colour was released to the wine during fermentation. However this system produced wines with lots of acidity, with too much malic acid. The main difference between France and Italy lies in the fact that, over the Alps, the Government realised a long time before those of the other European countries, particularly the Italian government, what had to be done to make wine a great resource for the nation. Thanks to public support for producers it was possible to carry out specialised studies and so achieve an improvement in the vines and technologies used in the cellars. They corrected the alcohol with sugar: a perfect oenological technique because sugar doesn’t influence the quality and characteristics of the product, creates no difference and is practically neutral. As far as colour was concerned, they selected the grape variety, choosing grapes with plenty of colour and very thick skins. Lastly, for the flavours, they used barriques, aided by the good Lord who filled the French woods with oak trees full of special tannins and perfumes. The Italians got off to a very late start, and it’s always hard to make up for lost time. Although lots of excellent grapes were grown in Italy, wine was considered to be a poor product, for consumption only – it was part of the calorie count in the daily diet – and the Government didn’t see it as being a resource, unlike its French counterpart. It was only in 1932 that an Interministerial Commission for the delimitation of the Chianti wine zone was set up. Unfortunately they made a great mess, taking half of Tuscany and improperly assigning it the denomination of Chianti. The law for defence dates back to 1963, and was implemented in 1967 for the Consortia. A delay due to an environment in which it was easy to produce grapes and wine, but where little attention was paid by politics to these issues and, when it was paid, the parties never managed to reach an agreement. While the French solved the problem of the lack of sunshine with technique, some Italian producers, not many to be honest, understood that they had to exploit the different climatic and soil conditions and that the flavours would be the direct product of the choice of remarkable autochthonous grape varieties, and of the care and hygiene with which the grapes were handled. This is how an Italian tradition which made our wines capable of competing with the French reds was born. This

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is how the Biondi Santi style became history: the most direct proof is the extraordinary collection of Reserves stored in the wine cellar at Il Greppo. There are bottles dating back over 120 years, which have been tasted at some of the nation’s most important public appointments. Some of these appointment have remained imprinted in the history of contemporary oenology, emphasising, all these years later, the accuracy of the decision to use Slavonian oak to make Brunello. In 1994, when the 1988 Reserve was released for sale, exactly 100 years after the first grand Reserve made at Il Greppo, I held a “vertical” of fifteen reserves, starting from the 1888 vintage and proceeding through to the 1988. I had invited sixteen journalists from the world’s most qualified wine magazines. They all came. One of them, Nicholas Belfrage from the English magazine “Decanter”, gave the 1891 vintage a score of 10 out of 10, sanctioning the perfection of a wine that was 103 years old at the time. You don’t need anything else to understand what it means to produce a wine which is the expression of a territory, of a grape variety and of a family. I’ll say it again: the decision not to use barriques depends on the fact that there’s no need here, because the wine that comes from our grapes, from vines cultivated rationally, at the right altitudes, with the right exposure, with grapes picked by hand and then vinified, needs no additional help. Naturalness is as fundamental to wine as it is to our lives. Naturalness means being as faithful as possible to nature. I see my wine as being natural because it’s made without forcing nature, with the slowness required to make natural things. The old Slavonian oak barrels reign in the cellar and a special world moves around them, in which everything has its own place in an intricate balance between antiquity and modernity, all to safeguard the tradition of vinifying Brunello. Visitors are absolutely fascinated when they first cross the threshold and look up to see the 18th century ceilings that were preserved even after the renovation work carried out by Franco Biondi Santi when his father died.The wine cellar at Il Greppo has a capacity of about 6,780 hectolitres. It houses stainless steel tanks and vitrified concrete tanks where the standard Brunello and Rosso di Montalcino are vinified, while the Slavonian oak vats and barrels are used for the production of the Reserves. In the antique reserves cellar there are no fewer than 59 thousand bottles. They are stored at a constant temperature of 13 degrees centigrade, in complete silence, with a level of humidity of 85%, in total darkness and with a constant check kept on the levels of the bottles, which lie horizontally. It is in this cellar that the ritual of topping up takes place, but, above all, this is the place where the estate’s wines mature and become what we know. The bottles don’t leave the cellar until four years have transpired from the grape harvest for standard Brunello, and five years for the Reserves.

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FFranco Biondi Santi takes another look at the photo in which his father Tancredi supervises the storage of the bottles to be labelled. It causes vivid memories of that meticulous task, so delicately specific as to resemble a ritual: the labels were applied by hand on a special table, using glue made with flour which unfortunately had one big drawback: it took a very long time to dry. The bottles were picked up, labelled and stood vertically to wait before being picked up again and taken, in baskets, to the storage rooms, where they were laid horizontally. This was an artisan procedure which no longer exists, as everything is automatic nowadays: there has been immense progress in this field. My father was just as meticulous when it came to storing very old bottles. It’s no mere coincidence that he is responsible for the origins of the “topping up” of the antique Reserves, a veritable ritual. Topping up is synonymous with Biondi Santi; Biondi Santi is synonymous with Reserves, i.e.: wines capable of withstanding the centuries, to use the words of a slogan which was fashionable in the 1960s and referred to a typical sweet from Siena which continues to present timeless appeal. The fact is that Biondi Santi really is one of the first estates in the world to have implemented the practice of topping up its bottles with wine from the same grape harvest.

CHApTER FOUR

THE ANTIqUE RESERvES AND THE RITUAL OF TOppINg Up

SINCE THAT EpIC OCCASION IN 1970 THIS SpECIAL pRACTICE HAS BECOME A TRADEMARk OF THE BIONDI SANTI FAMILY

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The “Ricolmatura” (topping up) of 1970. From left, Luigi Veronelli standing and, seated to his left, Tancredi Biondi Santi. From right, the Siena journalist Paolo Macchirini, standing in front of the Notary Giovani Guiso and Mario Soldati. The topping up operations in the reserve cellar of Il Greppo lasted three days.

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A real and profound reason makes this practice indispensable to keep the old and robust wines “in shape”. Franco Biondi Santi explains: the cork, compressed by the corking machine, expands inside the neck of the bottle; as time goes by, it loses elasticity and no longer adheres perfectly to the glass. Without this perfect adhesion, the level of the contents inside the bottle begins to drop and, as it drops, the surface of wine in contract with the air increases, meaning that the air bubble expands. Air accelerates the oxidation process, otherwise known as the ageing process. Consequently, when the wine reaches a certain level, falling below the mid “shoulder” – the bottle being characterised by a neck, shoulder and body – and the air bubble already has a significant diameter, either the wine must be drunk or topped up: the bottle is uncorked and we always add wine from the same vintage. The late 19th century bottles, from 1888 and 1891, have been

1945”. The document offers a detailed explanation of the procedure, states the number of bottles that were opened and the number that were filled during the long day, which ended “(…) at 6 o’clock p.m. on the aforementioned day”. No mention is made of how many bottles and from which vintages were drunk by the participants. Quite a few to be sure, considering the stories told, in different ways and at different times, by those involved in that memorable event. The words written by Mario Soldati in “Vino al vino” after drinking Brunello from ‘61, ‘45, ‘25 and even 1891 and 1888 and after witnessing the topping up, are memorable. Having asked Ferruccio Biondi Santi what the wine had that made it able to outlive even the most acclaimed Piedmontese wines, Mario Soldati writes “very calmly, almost offhandedly, as though volunteering a piece of information without importance, Biondi Santi replied: Well, you see, in the long term, the cork dries out, it shrinks and lets the air

topped up three times. The first time was in 1927, by Tancredi, when Franco was just a little boy. The second time was in 1970, in the cellar where the antique Reserves are kept at Il Greppo, in the presence of eminent personalities, experts and friends, because this remarkable event had to be validated by witnesses of the utmost importance. The proceedings of that day were even formalised and deposited, ad perpetuam memoriam, so that an indelible trace would remain: “Today, on the second of March 1970, in Montalcino in the Biondi Santi wine cellar on ‘Il Greppo’ estate, at 10 o’clock a.m., the following are gathered (...)” the legal document bears the names and details of the six people present (Mario Soldati, Luigi Veronelli, Paolo Maccherini, Tancredi Biondi Santi, Franco Biondi Santi and Giovanni Guiso) in that place “(…) to proceed with the uncorking of 348 bottles of BRUNELLO RISERVA BIONDI SANTI wine, 10 of which dating back to 1888; 49 to 1891; 32 to 1925; and 257 to

through. You have to take care to change the cork every twenty-five years. I dropped mentally to my knees, in admiration”.In actual fact, Franco Biondi Santi corrects, this is a printing error. It was Tancredi. But Mario Soldati’s ecstasy over the miracle of the new life given to old wine is understandable. And it’s also easy to understand how, starting by reading those same pages, during a republication for Mondadori, in a sort of Proustian journey in search of aromas, flavours and memories, Camillo Langone for “Il Foglio” wrote of his reformation with regard to Brunello. In a review-story entitled “La Diva Bottiglia” (The Bottle Star), Langone tells how, with immense diffidence, he tackled his challenge with Brunello, with that primogenial wine, i.e.: Brunello Biondi Santi (two bottles to be precise, one from 1999 and the other from 2001) in order to understand whether “of the above-mentioned heavy and repelling wines, the fault lay with the Brunello itself or with the individual

The longevity of wine also depends on the cork. In recent years, the consumption of corks has increased dramatically, but unfortunately there has been a decline in quality. The choice of cork is fundamental to make a wine capable of standing the test of time

These corks were extracted from bottles of wine about thirty, forty or fifty years after bottling.

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producers”. A Langone reformed on his own personal road to Damascus, writes on a large page in “Il Foglio”: “Franco Biondi Santi recommends uncorking his bottles eight hours before serving. To observe their evolution, we tried them in four separate phases: immediately after uncorking, three hours after, six hours after and twenty hours after (and at this point we were left with two risky and hyper-oxygenated remainders at the bottom of the bottles). Just after opening the Brunello was very hard and hostile and this was all it took to contradict the wine guides. Either the scores awarded aren’t truthful or the method used isn’t truthful, because the high scores awarded to Brunello Biondi Santi cannot be the result of blind tasting on equal terms, as it has to be uncorked hours before the other Brunello wines. Our bottles improved from one tasting phase to the next, while the tannins and acidity (elixir of long life) harmonised

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with the other components. As the bottles were gradually emptied of wine, they filled up with nostalgia and in order to keep on smelling them, we didn’t wash the glasses for two days”.Only very few of the precious bottles of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century are left in the wine cellar at Il Greppo: two from 1888, five from 1891, three from 1925 and twenty-two from 1945. There are a few more from 1955, about six hundred: that’s all that’s left of what is considered the only Italian wine among the twelve best wines produced in the world during the last century. Between the first and second topping up, in 1927 and 1970, respectively, over forty years transpired, while that time was more than halved between the second and the third, in 1985. As of 1990, this complex operation is systematically performed and also regards the Riserve del Greppo owned by collectors. For these precious occasions, an announcement is issued (we are now at the 19th) all over the world, indicating the vintages that will be checked and, where appropriate, topped up, the methods with which the bottles must be taken to Il Greppo, the methods used for their appraisal and the expression of the final judgement of the state of the bottles by Franco Biondi Santi. The rules are highly stringent, a perfect example being that which peremptorily states that the “Bottles on which the label stating the vintage and registration number are illegible will not be accepted”.Intensification of the checks and the need to top up the bottles more frequently are due to the fact that, with the approval of the law on the protection of high quality wines (the famous law 930 implemented in 1967), the wine world changed dramatically. Many estates which

made good wines decided to qualify their production by starting to bottle their own wine. This increased the consumption of corks, but unfortunately their quality suffered. The choice of cork is fundamental to make a wine that will stand up to very long periods of ageing. On this matter I accepted a challenge with a German who didn’t agree with my practices and claims: he insisted so much that, in the end, just to make him happy, I bottled 24 bottles with glass stoppers and another 24 with corks. We’ll meet up again in thirty years’ time – I told him – and you’ll be able to tell the difference between the wines bottled using the two different methods. Much depends on the cork: a poor quality, really cheap cork, lasts no time at all. Franco Biondi Santi’s explanation is meticulous, as befits someone who really cares: The Reserves are examined, on a spot-check basis, every two or three years at the most. These are wines which are left in peace, in the dark, lain horizontally. Even noise has to be monitored, because noise is a vibration and vibrations could alter the wine: I say “could” because we don’t know exactly how much influence noise has. Not even the French have ever succeeded in proving the incidence on the quality of wine: and to think that they have bottles on the market dated 1794. Yet we know, albeit empirically, that the environment in which the wine rests has to have precise characteristics: there has to be no noise, no light and the temperature has to remain constantly at 13 degrees, with very high relative humidity. The bottles in the cellar enjoy ideal conditions so it is highly unlikely that you will ever find that the wine contained in them isn’t perfect. On the market however, many bottles are stored in

Six hands against the cork of a Riserva 1946.

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dreadful conditions and the effects of this poor storage affect the wine directly. As a passionate producer, Franco Biondi Santi offers us a very evident example: I remember that there was a restaurant opposite Santa Maria Novella station in Florence. One day, as I was walking past with my father, we saw bottles of Biondi Santi, one of 1891 and the other of 1888, displayed in the window, in the sunshine. My father rushed inside and argued with the owner of the restaurant because it was such a shame to see something so horrendous and decided that he would never sell him another bottle of Brunello. This episode fuelled my idea to top up our customers’ wines, too, creating an opportunity to inspect all the bottles in circulation.It is a very special procedure which allows us to judge the state of health of a wine. First of all the bottles are weighed on high-precision scales, to within one hundredth of a gram, i.e.: a decimilligram; the bottle is then “decapsulated”, or uncorked, and handed to Franco Biondi Santi. The back of every bottle bears the name of the owner with the telephone number: it is necessary to personalise the bottles in order to inform the owners of the condition of their wines, at any time. Franco Biondi Santi himself observes the level and the colour – two preliminary elements – then he smells and tastes the wine, not taking it directly into his mouth, but using a straw, invented especially to avoid touching the wine, which will be returned to the bottle, with his lips. If the wine passes this first step of the test, it is then weighed, topped up with Brunello from the same vintage and weighed again to check the exact percentage of wine added. The Reserves kept at Il Greppo have been topped up several times, starting way back in 1927 when the historical vintages of 1888 and 1891 were taken care of. In 1970 in was the turn of the Reserves of 1888, 1891, 1925 and 1945. In 1978 in was the turn of the Reserves of 1955 and, seven years later, in 1985, of the Reserves of 1888, 1891, 1925, 1945 and 1964. At the beginning of this century, in 2000, the same operation was carried out for the vintages of 1955, 1968, 1975, 1981, 1983 and 1985. The following year only the vintages of 1971 were topped up, with the 1969 vintage being topped up in 2005. The last topping up took place in 2007 and regarded the 1970 Reserves.The ritual of topping up is performed for Brunello Riserva only. By Franco Biondi Santi alone. This is why his decision is final: he knows all the grape harvests and the flavours that determine them. He knows the most profound moods of the aged wines, is able to communicate with them and understands their needs: for example, he knows if it’s necessary to have a bottle rest because its owners have kept it standing vertical for too long. And he knows most of the owners all over the world.

After forty years, when they have lost the “goudron”, our Reserves stay virtually the same, the only difference being the size of the harvests, which conveys more or less longevity. The extensive persistence that remains in the mouth and throat is characteristic, while the glass “creates the cloak” which vanishes very, very slowly. I think that 1891 is still the year to beat. It is a wine with a colour that is still vigorous, ruby red tending vaguely to orange, a bouquet all of its own, very particular and tempting, with a hint of pipe tobacco flavoured with molasses, an infinite persistency and a decisive flavour, that of Il Greppo, its land and its barrels

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There is a specific market for old wines, a different market to that of those who want to drink a good, valuable wine every now and then. Where does this passion come from? Is the collection of wines associated more with investment or with the rewarding of a desire, a passion? These questions can be answered with sophisticated sociological theories or by making financial analyses. Franco Biondi Santi has his own personal key of reading, one which derives from history, from the life he has lived: It is something which completely involves both intellect and the heart, it makes people fall in love. I want to tell you about something which really struck me. I have two girls who take people around the cellar: one day I was there in the office when they called me, telling me there were four Americans who wanted to meet me. I went, because I’m not always present at tours of the cellar. I opened the door and saw a woman who was almost as tall as me, elderly and rather plump. She looked at me, threw her arms around my neck and burst into tears. Then her husband did the same as his wife. Their emotion was real and this means that when a wine is known and appreciated there’s an intellectual involvement, too. Let me tell you another story. When Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States, in the mid-Sixties, an old man came to Il Greppo, announcing himself as former secretary of the US President. He wanted to buy some wine and was particularly interested in the 1891 Reserve and wasn’t bothered about the fact that it was extremely expensive. We went to the cellar, he tasted a few other vintages and I realised immediately that he was a real connoisseur from the way he tasted the wine, from the way he talked, and from the interest he showed in the oenological explanations I offered. Then we came to the antique bottles of Reserve he was looking for; I think I had about a dozen at the time. He asked me if he could buy two. I was astounded, considering that they cost about 30 million lira each at the time. I asked him why he wanted two and he promptly replied: one to drink and the other for my collection.Keeping and drinking a late 19th century wine requires the ability to perform precise gestures. We listen to the advice of a man who has kept, and probably drunk, many: The bottles must be stored horizontally; they have to be stood vertically a week before drinking them because old wines, especially those over 25 years old, contain deposit, and this is the only way to allow the deposit to settle on the bottom, the “picure” of the bottle. However, the bottom of the wine, the part that is most grainy and not turbid, is the best part of the bottle during tasting, because it contains the most condensed wine.

If it is a pure Sangiovese, you must be able to see your finger through the wine. Brunello must have a quite deep ruby red colour, not black like ink

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I’ve always loved and taught others to love elegant wines with character; wines that possess a balanced taste between body, bouquet, tannins and acidity; old and very old wines which have managed to age while retaining all the characteristics of the wine; wines which are not “smooth”, which “gratify” the throat as they slip down it; wines that reflect the local tradition, made with autochthonous grape varieties, avoiding more or less successful copies. I like drinking them and sharing them with my closest friends and staff, to share my experience with them

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IThe monks of Sant’Antimo, way back in the 13th century, had a Moscato bianco vineyard very close to the abbey. They allowed the grapes to wither on the vine before bringing them into the cellar where they made a sweet, delicate wine by hand, for use in their religious and domestic lives, as they were able to make about nine “some”, equivalent to 819 litres. The chronicles of the time say that these monks also had a good nose for business and sold their wine at 60 lire per “soma”, which was an enormous amount of money at that time. But they had good customers, including the De’ Medici family from Florence. Tullio Canali, in his “Historia” of Montalcino, revealed the De’ Medici family’s great passion for Moscadello: “Given that the Court of the Most Serene Grand Duke is in the habit to procure Moscadello di Montalcino before the Christmas festivities, samples are to be sent immediately and, once the quality has been chosen and the quantity required by the Court determined, then all that is left may be sold, which was soon to become a common practice. The same Most Serene Grand Duke, revered by the community of San Quirico on his return in the Holy Year of 1700, in giving the ambassadors of Montalcino, Alessandro Spagni and Pier Giovanni Clementi (…) audience and proclamation of appreciation of the gift, praised said Muscat”.

CHApTER FIvE

THE REAL MOSCADELLO OF MONTALCINO

AT THE UNIvERSAL ExpO OF pARIS IN 1867 THIS pRECIOUS wINE OBTAINED THE “MENTION HONORABLE”

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As time went by, it spread way beyond the confines of Tuscany. It was a particular wine, which wasn’t drunk in taverns or inns, but was much appreciated at the royal courts. In the 17th century, this Muscat was recognised at the court of King Charles II of England. It had been taken there by one of the King’s favourites, John Evelyn, who, having been in the vicinity of Montalcino, came across this admirable wine and, as told by Attilio Sbrilli in his book “Viaggiatori stranieri in terra di Siena” (Foreign Travellers to Siena), hastened to write to Charles II: “On the second of November we left Siena as we wanted to be presented at the parade of the new Pope, Innocent X, who had still to perform the procession in San Giovanni in Laterano. We left through Porta Romana; the countryside around the town is particularly well suited to hunting and leisure activities. Game and wild boar can be bought at the stores in the villages around Siena. We passed nearby Monte Oliveto, where the Monastery of that Order is situated in a lovely position well worth seeing. We passed over a bridge which, according to inscription, would appear to have been built by Prince Mattia. We crossed Buon Convento, famous for the death of Arrigo VII, who was poisoned there with the holy bread. From there we travelled to Torniero, a village set in a gently rolling valley in view of Monte Alcini, renowned for its rare Moscadello”.The report drawn up by the founder of the Royal Society for his journey along the Via Francigena from Porta Romana to Buonconvento, from Torrenieri to Montalcino and Sant’Antimo really is extraordinary and even up to date. The wine John Evelyn wrote about was called Moscadello and was made in view of Monte Alcini. The monks really had done a wonderful job.Since then, from the words of John Evelyn, the fame of Moscadello grew and, as time went by, it attracted the palate and attention of poets and playwrights. Alfonso Donnoli, a 17th century poet from Montalcino, wrote to criticise those who hadn’t yet considered Moscadello: “(…) but the Amber of my mountain is decidedly better, it seems to placidly kiss you, when you drink it, and the Ilba bows to its taste”.In 1540, in a letter sent from Venice to a friend, the writer Pietro Aretino thanked him, praising him for the gift of a “keg of precious, delicate Moscadello, rounded and light, and with that gentle sparkle that seems to nibble, bite and kick, words that bring thirst to one’s lips”.Pope Urbano VIII, in the early decades of the 17th century, appreciated it “for its vigour and flavour” and with great discretion “often requested it for himself and his Court”.Francesco Redi in his “Bacco in Toscana” (Bacchus in Tuscany)

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of 1685 wrote verses so perfect as to generate the envy of many present-day advertisers: “Of the lovely/the so divine/Moscadelletto/from Montalcino./A wine so full of grace/for the ladies of Paris/and for those/so fair/who bring delight to the Thames”. Ugo Foscolo, during his stay at Colle Bellosguardo, near Florence, in 1803 wrote to his friend Leopoldo Cicognara: “(…) Quirina Mocenni Magiotti is not as greedy as believed. On the contrary, she is an extremely generous woman and presents me with grey partridges, Siena woodcocks and panforte and numerous flasks of Montalcino with which I impress all those who come to visit me up here”. In those days, Moscadello was sold in flasks of almost half a litre.Worried by the drop in attention that the vineyard owners were paying to the production of this wine, Clemente Santi invited them, in the “Giornale Agricolo Toscano” (Tuscan Agricoltural Journal) of 1862-1863, to increase the cultivation: “Montalcino doesn’t even harvest an eighth of the Moscadello it did in the past. Our Moscadello has such grace and aroma that, if we were fully aware of its value and utility, we would increase it one-hundredfold”. Over a century later, in the book “Prima dell’economia del Brunello” (Before the Economy of Brunello), Ilio Raffaelli remarked: “But his words went unheeded. (…) he believed in this production and, in Paris, at the Exposition Universelle of 1867, obtained the ‘mention honorable’ for the ‘vin de moscatel’ of Montalcino”.But as life teaches us, the step from fame to oblivion can be short: between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, less and less Moscadello was made and even less was said about it. The causes are well known. Powdery mildew, downy mildew and phyloxera, from the United States, had attacked the famous old “moscadellaie di Montalcino” used to make Moscadello, to such an extent that the production was so drastically reduced as to disappear almost entirely. No one had anything more to say about that wine which was now known only to those who had a marked interest in wine. But Tancredi Biondi Santi hadn’t forgotten about Moscadello and had never lost faith in it. In 1927 he wrote a public letter with the aim of reinstating the good name of Moscadello: “I can safely say that the utility of this grape variety is exceptional, certainly never inferior by twice that which can be obtained by cultivating other common grape varieties (…) The land owners should think about this and, with this good vision, full of hope, hasten to repopulate the slopes of our hill, enriching it with a product that was the pride of Montalcino and which should give life to an agricultural industry full of promise and fruits for everyone”.Production began again and with it the name of the wine returned

to its former splendour. Franco Biondi Santi remembers: in those days Moscadello was harvested when it was physiologically ripe, vinified off skins and then, filtered endlessly using finer and finer filters, until it was as limpid as possible, it was bottled a year later. But after a month, it began fermenting again and the bottles, the pulcianelle, exploded. So Tancredi turned his thoughts to late harvesting: the grapes were allowed to wither (on purpose) on the vine, so that the concentration of sugars increased due to the loss of water. The must was then pressed and directly fermented in French oak casks, where it spent two years maturing. The bottled wine was matured for at least six months and when it was uncorked, revealed the reason why it was referred to as divine.

The organoleptic characteristics of Moscadello induce thoughts of something not reserved for mere mortals: the old gold colour with intense hues, the delicate, fruity scents of candied fruit and apricot, the warm, harmonious and sweet taste with its elegant character make this Moscato bianco passito one of the finest representatives of dessert wines.The Biondi Santi family stopped making it way back in 1969, even though “the small amount made received excellent praise. Some bottles of old vintages are still kept in the cellar, but are strictly reserved for family and friends” as written by Burton Anderson. Franco Biondi Santi perfectly remembers when his father advised him to stop making Moscadello: He advised me to stop making it because all the surrounding vineyards were cultivated with Sangiovese. As far as Moscato is concerned, particularly in Montalcino, the grapes ripened 15 days before the Sangiovese,

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so naturally the insect world lived exclusively off Moscato plants during that period, to the point where there was nothing left. My father was right: since then my true passion has been Brunello.As the head of the household, he takes hold of a bottle of Moscadello 1969: it has a strange shape, unusual compared to those used today. These are “Renane” bottles, known as French-style bottles, no longer in use and very different from the Bordeaux bottles that contain Brunello. Their shape is more streamlined, better suited to contain liqueurs and spirits than wines. The label features a print of Montalcino with the name “Biondi Santi” printed above it in big capital letters, and the name “Moscadello” printed below in smaller but evident letters, with a specification in italics which says “Grand Dessert Riserva”. He carefully opens the wine and pours it into glasses of the same style: What we’re drinking now is from 1969 and was made with the last grapes of the Posticcia, under Buonconsiglio, here, 200 metres away. They were uprooted because it no longer made sense to keep them, also because that type of wine was finding it hard to maintain a place on the changing market. It was a sweet, alcoholic wine and in the Sixties people no longer appreciated it because tastes were changing. Not only had the market slackened off, we also had serious cultivation problems: the wasps were eating more grapes than we managed to take into the cellar. So we decided to stop growing Moscato. What we’re drinking now is an archaeological artefact: there are only about ten bottles left and I guard them jealously, tasting them with my friends very occasionally. The fact is that that wine, like this one we’re drinking – observes Franco Biondi Santi – was made entirely here in Montalcino, where the pedoclimatic influence considerably affects vine varieties and the changes that take place in time. This explains why the attempts made to make Moscadello with clones of vines taken from elsewhere and with methods used elsewhere, have all quickly failed.Slowly sipping our Moscadello, certain judgements and comparisons are inevitable: it reminds me of Moscato di Pantelleria, made with grapes harvested and left to wither in the sun. At Il Greppo, on the other hand, the grapes were harvested late, in order to increase the sugar content. Therefore the wine is very alcoholic, while being tasty and persistent, characterised by a great balance of sweetness and acidity, so it isn’t cloying. This balance depended partly on the clone used for our Moscato and partly on the pedoclimatic situation of our Posticcia vineyard. The grape harvest took place at the end of September, when the nights were cold and there was a big difference between daytime and night time temperatures.

Franco Biondi Santi uncorks one of the sixty remaining bottles of Moscadello 1969, the last vintage produced.

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FFranco Biondi Santi is a religious man, a very religious man. Catholic, from a Catholic family, he was one of the first to welcome, at the end of the Seventies, that monk who had come from France, like in an ancient pilgrimage, to revive the religious vitality of the fading abbey of Sant’Antimo. An enterprise which, as we know, succeeded but which found no lack of misunderstandings on its road.Franco Biondi Santi’s eyes light up at the memory of that place and those actions: It was a remarkable experience, due partly to chance and partly to the times in which it took place; sometimes we become involved in things without even wanting to and find that we’re happy only later on, when we look back. It was at the end of the Seventies that I met Father Andrea Forest: he came from a monastery in Normandy and was looking for a place near us where he could live his religiousness in intimate isolation. The way Father Andrea Forest finds out that the Auxiliary Archbishop of Montalcino, Monsignor Staccioli, was looking for monks to take care of the Abbey, which was by then in a state of complete abandon, is remarkable. The monk himself describes it in the book–interview by Maurizio Zanini “La storia di Andrea” (The Story of Andrea): “In 1977, the Abbot of Fontgombault died unexpectedly. His place was taken by Dom Forgeot (…) he told me

CHApTER SIx

FROM NORMANDY

TO THE RENAISSANCE OF SANT’ANTIMO

RELIgIOUSNESS, THE STORY OF FATHER ANDREA AND THE MIRACLE OF THE RECOvERY OF THE HISTORICAL ABBEY

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‘I know that the Archbishop of Siena is seeking monks for the abbey of Sant’Antimo’. He wanted to bring an abbey which, in the Middle Ages, had been a guiding light for Christianity in Tuscany, back to life. He had asked at the abbey of Fontgombault, but it had just started up two foundations. At the time it did not have the resources to take on Sant’Antimo, too. Furthermore, Sant’Antimo was not in favour of a monastic foundation of that type, which required large extensions of land and strict seclusion, all things that were missing here. All I know is that the Archbishop of Siena, the auxiliary and other people before them had already looked everywhere to find some religious figure who would be willing to take over the running of Sant’Antimo”.Today when you ask Father Andrea about the paths that brought him here, to the land of olive trees and vines, where an entire community has flourished, filling the abbey with spirituality once more, he crosses his hands, like preachers of ancient times, and murmurs “it is the secret of Providence”.The state of abandon of that admirable architectural and spiritual monument worried both the religious authorities and art historians considerably. A few operations had been carried out at the end of the 19th century, particularly on the studies carried out at that time by the architect Antonio Canestrelli. The engineer, Spighi, who had also designed the “big kitchen” at Il Greppo for Ferruccio Biondi Santi, also took part in these works. In 1987, the Friends of Sant’Antimo reprinted the entire work, which couldn’t be found anywhere at that time, of Antonio Canestrelli, “genial and industrious architectural historian”, a monograph reprinted by Tipografia Senese under the direction of Professor Mario Ascheri.The passion of that French white monk was echoed by the actions of many people from Montalcino and Siena who, by founding the Friends of Sant’Antimo, made Father Andrea’s utopia credible and possible. Franco Biondi Santi repeats the passages of the enterprise from memory: With His Excellency the Archbishop of Siena Monsignor Mario Ismaele Castellano, we drew up the statute, while the French monks went from one shelter to the next, from Ripa d’Orcia to Castiglion d’Orcia, from the Convento dell’Osservanza to the seminary of Montalcino, then to Castelnuovo dell’Abate until, after the family who lived in the farmhouse next to the abbey left, they moved there. Almost a quarter of a century has gone by, yet I can still remember the first Holy Masses in Latin, the scent of incense and the intense cloud of smoke that rose to the high naves and aisles, the surprise in rediscovering, stone by stone, seal by seal, a place where history, our history, is written, like in the big age-old olive trees that crown the abbey.

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Attention to the rituality, the taste for doing things properly, the religiousness manifested so openly by Franco Biondi Santi, are transferred into the care for earthly things. He insistently repeats, in a way which can even seem presumptuous: I like doing things properly. Agriculture and wine teach us to know how to wait, not to be in a hurry; they are part of a slow world, which has something religious about it, in which time is dictated by nature itself. One morning in June, when the sun is already turning the wheat yellow and beating down on the roof tiles of the farms, Franco Biondi Santi takes us to visit the abbey: an opportunity, he tells us, to say hello to Father Andrea. The abbey is now lit up by a light which penetrates with skilful gentleness and it is with gentleness that the two friends greet each other and converse beneath the wooden crucifix that the restoration work has made even more ascetic and austere. “We began this journey together thirty years ago – Father Andrea remembers aloud – because, besides the importance of Sant’Antimo, there’s a relationship of friendship that is also important, as we all know that we can’t live without friendship: life would become unbearable. Franco’s willingness has meant that our relationship has grown stronger, especially after our journey together to Normandy, my home, where we furthered our mutual knowledge of one another”.

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I don’t watch much television, but I still read a lot. I’m inquisitive with regard to the future, I play chess on the iPhone given to me by my grandchildren and I always lose

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BooksAA.VV., La terra senese e i suoi vini, 1986, Rome, Enoteca Italica Permanente/Siena Chamber of CommerceAnderson, B., Biondi Santi. La famiglia che ha creato il Brunello di Montalcino, 1988, Pomezia, Union Asher, G., On Wine, 1986, New York, NY Random House Biondi Santi, F., Il Brunello di Montalcino: il passato e il futuro, Proceedings of the Georgofili Academy, 2001, FlorenceBiondi Santi, F., Tipicità e longevità dei vini di “grandi riserve”, Proceedings of the Georgofili Academy, 2002, Florence Bosi, E., I vini d’autore, 1978, Florence, SansoniCanali, T., Libro di memorie dell’origine delli spedali di Montalcino in Toscana, Manuscript at Montalcino Municipal LibraryCanali, T., Notizie istoriche della città di Montalcino in Toscana, Manuscript at Montalcino Municipal LibraryCanessa, G., La guida del Chianti, Parte II, 1970, FlorenceCanestrelli, A., L’Abbazia di S.Antimo, 1987, Siena, Tipografia SeneseClementi, C., Canali, T., Arti e manifattura a Montalcino, Transcribed by A. BrandiCyril, R., The New Book of Italian Wines, 1982, London, Sidgwick & JacksonDallas, P., Italian Wines, 1983, LondonJohnson, H., The World Atlas of Wine, third edition, 1986, London, Mitchell BeazleyLichine’s, A., Encyclopaedia of Wine & Spirits, fourth edition, 1985, New YorkO’ Keefe, K., Il gentleman del Brunello, 2004, Veronelli Editore, BergamoPellucci, E., Brunello di Montalcino, second edition, 1986, Florence, Stabilimento poligrafico fiorentinoRaffaelli, I., Prima dell’economia del Brunello, 2001, Montepulciano, Le BalzeRay, C., L’Unico veramente importante produttore di Brunello, in The Wines of Italy, 1966, New York, McGraw-Hill Redi, F., Bacco in Toscana, 1742, NaplesSanti, G., Viaggi per la Toscana, 1795-1806,

(translated into French in 1802 and entitled “Voyage au Montamiata”)Sbrilli, A., Viaggiatori stranieri in terra di Siena, 1986, Siena, Monte dei Paschi di SienaSoldati, M., Vino al vino, 2006, Milan, MondadoriVeronelli, L., I vignaioli storici, 1986, Milan, Mediolanum editori associatiVeronelli, L., I vini d’Italia, 1961, Rome, Moderne CanesiVeronelli, L., The Wines of Italy, 1965, New YorkZanini, M., La storia di Andrea, 2008, Siena, Cantagalli

ArticlesAsimov, E., Some See a Wine, Loved Not Wisely, But Too Well, «The New York Times», February 2006B., C., È nato un nuovo hobby: collezionare vini “nobili”, «Giornale di Brescia», January 1971Biondi Santi, F., Regal Brunello, «Italian Wines & Spirits», 1985Cambi, C., Biondi Santi una dinasty all’ombra del Brunello, «De Vinis», July-August 2007Cappelli, A., Parli chi ha più di 66 vendemmie alle spalle…, «Il Chianti e le Terre del Vino», July-August 2007Cappelli, R., Luigi Santi: uno storico moderno alla ricerca delle origini “vere” di Montalcino, «Argonauti», September-October 1990Castagno, A., Fare Brunello per crederci, «Bibenda», May 2008Cerdonio, B., Una bottiglia di vino per un museo pagata oltre quattrocentomila lire, «Messaggero Veneto», March 1971Gabrielli, A., Cent’anni di Brunello Riserva Biondi Santi. La degustazione del secolo, «Gambero Rosso», January 1995Langone, C., La diva bottiglia, «Il Foglio Quotidiano», January 2007McCarter Rome, M., Biondi-Santi celebrates 100th; «Wine Spectator», June 1988Raffaelli, I., Centoventi anni in fiaschetteria, «Il Gazzettino del Brunello»Remondino, M., Si ripete il rito del Brunello: gocce di vino a peso d’oro, «Corriere della Sera», June 2000Suckling, J., “Wines of the century”, «Wine Spectator», January 1999

BIBLIOgRApHY

Brunello best product of Italy, «Caterer e Hotelkeeper», October 1964The report by Franco Biondi Santi at the meeting of agronomists on Brunello di Montalcino, «Agricoltura senese», March 1969The Renaissance lives on in Tuscany, «National Geographic», November 1974Brunello: un prodotto tipico di alta classe, «La Fortezza», May 1964«Cerimonia» enologia al «Greppo» di Montalcino, «La Nazione», March 1970Il vino più caro del mondo, «L’Espresso», December 1969Soldati, Veronelli e il Brunello Biondi Santi, «La Starcia», 1970 DocumentsOriginal document on the topping up of 1970, Archives at Il Greppo

Letter accompanying bottles sent For the defence of Chianti Wine and other typical Tuscan wines, Report by the Interministerial Commission for the delimitation of the Chianti wine zone, 1932, Bologna, Tipografia Antonio BrunelliItalian Agrarian Encyclopaedia, volume four, part seven, 1880, Turin, Unione tipografico-editriceLetter dated 1966 in appreciation of the wine sent to Tancredi Biondi Santi by Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, Prince of VenosaReport by Franco Biondi Santi on Brunello di MontalcinoBook introducing the vertical wine tasting held at Il Greppo on 11 December 1994Letter of thanks from Emilio Paoli to Franco Biondi Santi, 4 December 197119th Announcement of the “Topping Up” of bottles of Brunello di Montalcino Biondi Santi Riserva, Tenuta Greppo owned by our customers, January 1 2009

Printing was completed in November 2010

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