Fontodi

The Free Bacchus Story

Panzano sits in a south-facing bowl of galestro and alberese — an amphitheatre of stony, calcareous soil widely held to be the most favoured microclimate in Chianti Classico. The Manetti family have owned Fontodi, at the centre of it, since 1968.

An address like that is usually enough. Giovanni Manetti, who has run the estate since the 1980s, concluded it was not: that the quality of Fontodi's Sangiovese was inseparable from the health of the soil beneath it, and that conventional chemistry was suppressing what the amphitheatre could actually express. The estate has now farmed without synthetic intervention for several decades, certified organic under Ecocert.

The Manetti family have been making terracotta for four centuries, and the vessels used in the cellar are made by them: four to five hundred litres, unlined, fired at 950°C. Almost nobody else can say the container and the wine came from the same family.

Flaccianello della Pieve, pure Sangiovese from the oldest vines aged in small French oak, is treated as a benchmark for the grape. The Chianti Classico and Gran Selezione carry identical farming at prices a person might drink on an ordinary evening.

Fontodi also makes Syrah, under the Case Via label, which has attracted serious attention from Rhône-focused collectors, a versatility not every Chianti estate can claim, and a hint that the site is doing more work than the appellation lets on.