Querciabella

The Free Bacchus Story

Most biodynamic vineyards use animal-derived preparations — manure, horn, bone. Querciabella does not use any, anywhere on the estate, and it is one of very few serious wine producers in the world farming a vegan biodynamic system by explicit design.

The estate sits in Greve in Chianti and has been farmed organically since 1988 and biodynamically since 2000, which makes it one of the longest-running conversions in Tuscany. The vegan decision followed from the owner's ethical position and required rebuilding the preparation regime from plant material and compost alone, a genuinely difficult agronomic problem, since the animal inputs exist in the standard for reasons that are not merely traditional.

It appears to work. Camartina, the estate's Cabernet-Sangiovese flagship, and Batàr, a Chardonnay-Pinot Blanc white, both sit at the top of their respective Tuscan categories, with Wine Advocate scores in the mid to high nineties across recent vintages. The Chianti Classico itself is the more accessible entry and carries the same farming.

Cossia Castiglioni's account is that twenty years ago nobody understood what veganism meant, and that the scepticism about the estate's approach lasted until the wines held up.

We include the detail about preparations because it illustrates something about certification generally: a standard sets a floor, and some producers spend real money and effort going somewhere the standard never asked them to go. Those decisions rarely appear on a label, and are usually discoverable only by asking.