By Marco Massetani
“In life it is very important to make yourself wanted. Above all when you have a reason for it,” says Franco BIondi Santi, the most famous ‘gentleman’ of Brunello in the world.
The Greppo estate is a small earthly paradise that barely descends the gentle curves which caress Montalcino in the ‘red’ heart of Tuscany. You enter it from a dirt road and from two long rows of cypress trees, and soon have the exquisite sensation of confronting a magic place that is out of time.
It is a place that every journalist or writer would like to visit and describe at least once in their lifetime. Some can boast of having had this chance or this privilege. For example, Mario Soldati, who dedicated several pages of his Vino al vino to Greppo. He was left “speechless, as though he were in the presence of a small miracle,” after having been present at the piling-up rite of the Vecchie Riserve [Old Reserves], bottles of extraordinary longevity that today are the joy and good fortune of collectors.
Biondi Santi is a historic trademark, and not just because it originated in the 19th century, the great century that first witnessed Clemente Santi receiving an award at the Paris International Fair of 1867 for his ‘Moscadello’ of 1865 (we were still at the level of knowledge of Louis Pasteur). Ferruccio Biondi Santi then created the first Brunello from the legendary grape harvest of 1888.
The fame and the secret of this wine have always been linked to the originality of an ancient philosophy of vine growing and wine production that raised Brunello to a ‘red’ (wine) among the most costly and appreciated in the world: guaranteed on the tables of the ‘great’, starting from the late Frank Sinatra and ending with the royal courts of Europe.
Until now, this tradition has been faithfully handed down by three generations: Ferruccio, who was also a Garibaldian and a painter; Tancredi, a refined œnologist; and Franco, who had a degree in Agricultural Sciences, to whom the trademark’s international fame is owed. However, a little big secret of their success lies in the precious DNA of this second surname, i.e. Santi, which was a family of land owners from Pienza, as well as ‘enlightened scientists’. Thus, by vocation they were inclined to innovation and experimentation.
The Biondi Santi Brunello originates from painstaking choices and precise evaluations of the structure of the terrain. The grape harvest is done by hand, and the grapes are selected, bunch by bunch, in the vineyard, where the use of pest control products is unthinkable. The harvest covers 25 highly-selected hectares of a single type of autochthonous vine: a choice that rewards the absolute and undisputed quality. Only natural yeasts are used for making the wine, and the ageing – 2 years “in wood” and 2 years in the wine cellar, in order to arrive at the birth of vintage Brunello or a Reserve, respectively, after 5 and 6 years from the harvest – takes place in the original late 19th-century Slavonian-oak barrels, and never in barriques. The result? ‘Only’ 80,000 bottles per production year, which bear the famous Biondi Santi label and bestow the delight of a 100% Sangiovese grosso with an intense colour, delicate scents, and excellent complexity. And a great future.
When the season is not one of the best, an excellent wine endowed with a lesser ‘structure’ is ready: the Rosso di Montalcino. There is also the very sober and elegant Rosato [Rosé] 2004, which recently arrived on the scene.
‘To make a light wine, the grapes must be perfect,’ boasts, and rightly so, Franco Biondi Santi, 86 years old that he bears with refined enthusiasm, in the drawing room of his magnificent villa adjacent to the 1726 Family Chapel, the ocular testimony of the history of Greppo.
His eyes truly light up as he leafs through old articles from international newspapers and magazines, such as Wine Spectator, which selected his Brunello Riserva 1955 as the sole Italian wine among the 12 dream bottles of the last century. The same brilliant level was attained in 1994, during the course of a vertical tasting of 15 Reserves that covered the space of 100 years (from 1888 to 1988). On that occasion, the journalist Nicholas Belfrage of Decanter gave the highest possible mark of ten out of ten to a Biondi Santi Reserve of 1891.
No one seems to be aware of all this glory, if we observe Greppo today with its very restrained and mystical tranquillity and simplicity. Here, among vines and centuries-old cypress trees, success is a long, silent period of waiting.
http://www.unioneimpresestoriche.it, May 2008
Filippide 