Castello dei Rampolla

The Free Bacchus Story

Castello dei Rampolla has farmed biodynamically since 1994 and refuses to be certified for it. That is not an oversight and it is not a saving. The di Napoli family, whose land this has been since 1739, treat certification as somebody else's category and have simply declined to enter it.

What they will tell you is what goes on the vines. The estate's own vineyard page puts it in a single sentence: the only treatments we use are based on copper, sulphur and propolis. The biodynamic preparations are stirred in flow forms, a run of partly overlapping basins the water passes through on its way down. Rampolla sits in the Conca d'Oro at Panzano, a valley named for the gold of the wheat that grew there before the vines, and its growers' association calls the place Italy's first wine biodistrict, so the neighbours are doing versions of the same thing.

Sammarco is the wine the estate is known for, and it broke a rule when it arrived: Cabernet Sauvignon with Sangiovese and a little Merlot, made in the middle of Chianti Classico at a time when Chianti was supposed to be Sangiovese and very little else. Wines like it had to go out under the humblest label available, and the world started calling them Super-Tuscans. It is named for Marco di Napoli, brother of Maurizia and Luca, who run the estate today.

We list Rampolla under Track B, the route for a house whose farming can be documented but whose certificate does not exist, and the standard asks that the reason be the producer's own and stated out loud. Theirs is. What ends up in the bottle is a dense, structured Tuscan red that wants a decade lying down and repays every year of it.