San Miniato: a cosmos of grape growing

Yet while the town’s truffles may command the autumn spotlight—despite growing concerns after a long, rainless summer—another agricultural story is quietly gaining momentum here: wine . Stretching from the rocky landscape around Volterra towards the Tyrrhenian coast, the vineyard-clad hills of this part of Tuscany fall, to a certain extent, within the Terre di Pisa DOC .

Until roughly 70 years ago, much of the area was not covered by vineyards and olive groves at all. Design-driven wines: Inserrata At Gabriele Dolfi’s Inserrata estate, that spirit of experimentation is especially evident. “Our goal is to attract visitors looking for short stays and authentic experiences.

We want to offer them a place to rest for one or two nights while introducing them to our wines, olive oil. Other local products.” Inserrata covers around 100 hectares, roughly 80 per cent of which is woodland. Dolfi’s parents picked up the estate in 1997, when it consisted largely of an old holding and hunting lodge. One of the B&Bs occupies an 1880 hunting lodge that once belonged to Sidney Sonnino , the Italian statesman who used the property as a retreat while staying at his nearby villa.

Dolfi joined the family business in 2015, determined to turn the wine operation into a professional enterprise. Industrial wines strive for consistency; artisanal wines express each growing season.” Perhaps the most surprising element of Inserrata is its emphasis on white wine in a region where red is usually king. Fossil-rich limestone, marine sediments and sand contribute to the geology of San Miniato , the same conditions that help make the area renowned for its white truffles.

For Dolfi, the most marked change is not simply rising temperatures but mounting humidity, creating conditions that are beginning to resemble a more tropical climate. Tempranillo in Tuscany: Beconcini At Leonardo Beconcini ’s namesake winery, an unusual story begins with a vineyard that was never meant to be unusual at all.

Beconcini quickly understood that the estate was never going to become renowned by competing on scale. Instead, he chose to pursue individuality. “The awareness that we would never become a huge, famous winery was important,” he states. “Without humility, I would have made the wrong decisions.” Then, in the mid-1990s, researchers from the University of Florence arrived to study one of the estate’s old vineyards as part of a project identifying superior Sangiovese clones across Tuscany.

In the winery’s earliest harvests, grapes were approaching 16 per cent potential alcohol as early as the beginning of August, far too ripe for the balanced red wines Beconcini wanted. Beconcini therefore allows his Tempranillo vines to carry as much as 3.5–4 kilograms of fruit per vine, slowing the ripening process. It came from years of observing the vines, making mistakes, experimenting and sometimes sacrificing fruit in order to understand how each variety behaves.” The same philosophy guides the estate’s broader response to climate change.

The contrast between the two varieties underlines the central lesson of Beconcini’s approach: there is no single method for the vineyard . San Miniato may never carry the instant wine recognition of Chianti Classico or Bolgheri, and yet that is part of its attraction.

It is a microcosm of grape growing , where the soil, climate and memory of the land are producing wines with stories of their own. Don’t miss the Festa del Tempranillo this September 4 and 5 as Beconcini wines pairs steak with its full range of wines in a sociable vineyard setting.