Podere Le Ripi

It all began with Francesco Illy's falling in love with Montalcino, a love for a place, an emotion. This love made the well-known coffee entrepreneur purchase, in 1984, a farm near the hamlet of Castelnuovo dell'Abate, on the eastern side of Montalcino and from here Podere le Ripi was born. In 1999 he began his adventure in viticulture with the first plantings and in 2011 he started towards a conversion to biodynamic agriculture. Today the estate has around 75 hectares of biodynamic vineyards, rooted in the woods, olive trees, vegetable gardens and fruit trees, divided between the two Montalcino slopes, one to the west with alluvial, sandy soils and the other to the east, on calcareous marl; from this geological and microclimatic diversity the five different company wines originate, each coming from individual plots, including the Bonsai vineyard, the densest in the world with 62,500 vines/ha. The work philosophy applied to Podere le Ripi does not include the use of products that are not 100% natural, both in the vineyard and in the cellar, where all the wines undergo delicate and natural processing, with the use of large vats and barrels of fine woods for fermentation and refinement, before finishing the process with harmonization in glass block tanks. The path, so particular and accurate, has the sole purpose of enhancing the peculiar characteristics of the individual Sangiovese vineyards in Montalcino because, as the producer says, "it is only thanks to patience and continuous dialogue with what surrounds us that we can ennoble everything that mother nature has given." Producing Brunello in Montalcino is a lifestyle that has been rooted here for centuries. In contrast, the application of biodynamic agriculture is a relatively new philosophy. Francesco Illy marries the two concepts to produce a Brunello following the classic aging in the cellar and natural agriculture in the fields: the results are wines that truly represent the vintage, the soil and the culture of the area.