Il terroir
When this hill was a seabed
Terroir is an overused word. Here it means something concrete: the way soil, climate and topography interact to make these wines the way they are and not some other way.
The soil is clay, and in several parcels it is full of marine fossils — what is left of the time these hills lay under the sea. The clay holds water and gives body and structure; the fossil content brings salinity.
The climate is a hill climate, but with the Adriatic a few kilometres away and the Casentino Apennines at our back. Nights stay cool even through the hottest summers, which is why our wines carry alcohol and aromatics together rather than one at the expense of the other.
What comes out is full, warm, markedly savoury. Dense cherry and blackberry, silky tannins, and a long saline finish that asks for the next bite. These are not light wines, and they do not pretend to be.
Twenty hectares, ten varieties
We grow the historic grapes of Romagna, the ones that have had a century or more to settle in here: Sangiovese, Albana, Trebbiano, Pagadebit, Famoso and Cagnina.
Alongside them we have planted selected clones of Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Bianco and Chardonnay- not to chase an international palate, but because on these soils they gave results worth exploring.
The harvest is done entirely by hand, with the fruit carefully sorted. It is the single largest cost in what we do, and the one we have no intention of cutting.
Albana
In 1987 it became the first Italian white wine to be awarded DOCG status, Italy's highest classification. Thick-skinned, with an acidity that carries it through years in bottle and a structure no other white in Romagna has.
Famoso
A native Romagnolo variety that had almost disappeared before being brought back over the last few decades. Aromatic without being sweet: peach, apple, jasmine.
Pagadebit e Cagnina
Two names straight out of a farming economy. Pagadebit means “debt-payer”: the vine that cropped reliably even in bad years, the one that paid the bills.
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