Soldera Case Basse

The Free Bacchus Story

In 2012 someone entered the cellar at Case Basse and opened the taps. Sixty-two thousand litres of Brunello from multiple vintages drained onto the floor — years of work, irreplaceable, gone in a night.

Gianfranco Soldera rebuilt and carried on, which is consistent with everything else about how he worked. He began farming here in 1972 and set a standard the rest of Montalcino spent decades interpreting: perfect farming, perfect Sangiovese Grosso, years in large old Slavonian oak, more years in bottle, and a complete indifference to when the market would like the wine to arrive. The organic farming predates Italy's certification infrastructure entirely. He did not farm without chemistry because a movement asked him to; he farmed without it because it was incompatible with the wine he was trying to make.

The Consorzio del Brunello offered to supply him with replacement wine so that he would have something to sell. Soldera turned it down on the grounds that it would not be fair to the people buying it, resigned from the consortium, and has bottled as Toscana IGT rather than Brunello ever since. Losing the appellation was a decision, not a punishment.

Yields are among the lowest in Montalcino, vine age among the highest, and cellar time before release among the longest, every element of the production model signalling that this is not wine made for anyone in a hurry.

Soldera died in 2019. His family manage the estate with the standards unchanged, which in a property built this completely around one person's conviction is not a small thing to maintain.