Since the 2022 wines finished fermenting in October of that year, and I first tasted them, they have seemed different. As always, the grapes were destemmed and put into small tanks; during fermentation, the sugar in the grapes was consumed by the yeast on the skins and turned into alcohol. Then the wines were racked […]
The 2022 harvest was going to be more important than usual: I had convinced the owners of a small, high vineyard outside of Florence to sell me their grapes. In fact, they wanted to sell me their vineyard. I was tempted: 500 meters up, planted on well-draining sandstone slopes–one facing south and one west–the vines
I like to say that the Fanciulle wines are Tuscan wines for Burgundy lovers, by which I mean that the Fanciulle wines have a delicacy and tanginess which, while natural (and, I think, the most delicious) expressions of Sangiovese, are not necessarily typical. I am also consciously using approaches to viticulture and winemaking learned in
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Wine lovers, the press and winemakers themselves like to talk about “terroir-driven” wines, a vague expression that I transcribe as “wines with a sense of place”–only slightly less vague–but at least it gives us a starting point. Many of us are used to “varietal wines,” or wines that are made predominantly from one kind of
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The real reason I started Fanciulle Vini was to make the wines I wanted to drink. Over the years, I had finished drinking most of the bottles of a cellar of Burgundy wines I had inherited, and not only could I not afford to replace them, the wines I had gotten used to sipping with
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