The Buon governo (1338–40), a fresco by the Sienese painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti, shows us how vines were grown during the late Middle Ages in the countryside from Siena to the hills of Chianti Senese. There are three training systems visible. First, there are specialized vineyards just outside the city walls, planted in the alberello style, supported by stakes. Giovanna Morganti, who uses alberello at her estate, Le Boncie, mentioned that the density of these vineyards has been estimated at twenty thousand vines per hectare (8,094 per acre). The heads of the vines are about thirty centimeters (one foot) off the ground, and each carries two or three dark purple bunches. There are some canes arching over the rows, bearing what look like more bunches. These were likely grown to allow particularly vigorous plants to more fully express themselves, resulting in a higher yield per plant. These specialized vineyards have olive trees planted here and there. Hence they are not strictly monocultural. The second system is up in the hills, where fields bordered by trees appear. These trees, likely olive and fruit trees, may also have supported vines in the method known as the alberata system. It became dominant in the late eighteenth century and was commonly used in Chianti until the mid-1960s. Third, there are rows of what appear to be vines in the square fields contained by these fences of trees. Each row was called an anguillare, perhaps because it looked like a row (filare means “a row of trees”) of eels (anguilles in French). Stakes or canes supported these vines. Parallel rows in a field were called a pancata, from panca, meaning “bench.” Perhaps vine rows, usually three or four in number, when lined up resembled people sitting on a bench. In the Buon governo, the rows run along the contour of the slope, limiting water runoff and hence soil erosion. The distance between them was as much as six meters (twenty feet), and it was customary for shoots to grow into these spaces and bear fruit, substantially increasing yields.1 Farmers also planted other crops between the rows.
What we see here are two very different systems of viticulture existing side by side. One emphasized low-trained, densely planted vines. The area of planting, called a vineyard, had a monoculture, focusing all the power of the earth and sun into one plant, the vine. This was the system devised in ancient Greece and transferred to the Italian peninsula via the colonization of southern Italy by the Greek city-states. The target environment of this system was south-facing slopes and stony soils. The resulting wines had concentrated flavors and ample residual sugar or alcohol. The other system, training vines high up trees and interplanting with other crops, was inspired by the Etruscan civilization. It was born in the fertile plains lining the Tyrrhenian Sea. The soils there could support the simultaneous growth of vines and other plants, such as trees, cereals, vegetables, and fruits. These vines in polyculture produced wines that were less concentrated and lower in alcohol and sugar. But we also see in the Buon governo a compromise between the two, in the form of anguillari (the plural of anguillare) and pancate (the plural of pancata), rows of vines with crops planted in between. In subsequent centuries, the question of what type of viticulture resulted in better wine stubbornly remained a matter of discussion in viticultural circles despite the agreement among the most sensitive and experienced viticulturalists that the Greek system was the answer.
More than two centuries after Lorenzetti finished his fresco, Girolamo da Firenzuola described the same vine training systems that appear in the background of its hilly countryside, plus a few others: “à vigna ò pancate, anguillari, pergole ò bronconi ò alli alberi maritate” (in a vineyard or by pancate, anguillari, pergolas or bronconi or married to trees).2 Bronconi (the plural of broncone) are tall columns or poles topped with transverse pieces of wood or cane.
To make the best wine, Firenzuola recommended planting vines in vineyards on hills, more or less in monoculture. They should be low to the ground, in the alberello style, and supported by stakes. That way, the harvest would be of lower volume but higher quality. Firenzuola was an advocate of dedicated vineyards because he noted that fruit from vines in the center of a vigna was better and hence made better wines. He saw this as proof that monoculture produced better wines than polyculture. For a greater quantity of wine, he advised planting anguillari and pancate on gentle slopes with rich soil or on the plains. In this training system, the vine’s trunk grows several feet high. Its head can have a cordon or cane extending horizontally, supported by a stick. If one wanted more but weaker wine, one should let the vines grow higher, up bronconi. If even more production was desired, vines should be trained higher still, to overhang from pergolas and grow up trees, with expansive canopies that would compete with that of the tree. Firenzuola encouraged his readers to make wines from each of the training systems that he described and come to their own conclusions: “And so we say that in order to experience yourself what we have discussed above, harvest grapes and put them in different vats, the grapes harvested from one vineyard in one vat, and, in another, the grapes from a pancate planted in true anguillari, and all from hilltop sites in the same area using the same grape variety. And like this you make your own test to find out what makes the best wine, and without doubt the wines of the vineyard site will be better than those of pancate by a wide margin.”3
From 1710 to 1729, Domenico Falchini, while serving as the fattore at the Medici estate of Lappeggi, wrote his Trattato di agricoltura (Treatise on agriculture), which describes in detail all the vine training systems that Firenzuola cited. Falchini’s preferred training system was alberello, supported by a chestnut stake with spurs on each branch carrying up to three buds.4 When discussing his recipe for making great wine to age, similar to that of Montepulciano or Chianti, he explained that the best system to adopt was a dedicated vineyard with low-trained vines (vite basse) in a sunny spot. Low training meant the vines could benefit from the moisture rising from the ground, and it “matura e confetta l’uva” (matures and makes the grape sweet).5 Falchini also believed that it was possible to make excellent wines with vines in pancate, if they too were trained low and in a sunny spot. He said that vines trained higher off the ground, as on bronconi or columns, “produce worse grapes than the vines in a vineyard or in a pancata.”6 He noted that high training on columns would produce a high yield of quality wine grapes if the columns were positioned above dry stone walls. The foundations of the walls would provide drainage for the vine roots,7 which must have kept grape size low and hence fruit quality high. At the very beginning of his treatise he listed training vines up trees as one of several possible methods, but he did not mention it again.8 Perhaps the quality of the resulting grapes was not high enough for the Villa Lappeggi wines.
Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi, writing about fifty years later, like Firenzuola and Falchini advised his readers to plant vines in high places, not in the plains, to get better wines.9 Villifranchi was the pen name of Saverio Manetti, a professor of botany at the Società Botanica Fiorentina (Florentine botanical society) and a supervisor of the Orto Botanico di Firenze (Botanic garden of Florence). His treatise made no reference to anguillari or pancate. This suggests that these terms were no longer in common use, though the system must have continued, since rows of vines with crops planted in between can still be seen in old vineyard sites such as in Casole and Ruffoli in Greve. As if referring to pancate, Villifranchi noted that if other crops were to be planted between vine rows, the rows would have to be more distant from one another.10 This was a period, however, of solidification and rapid expansion of the mezzadria system in Tuscany and in Chianti in particular. Higher training on trees offered the possibility of growing a wider variety of crops in a limited space, so it was becoming more popular than anguillari or pancate among Chianti’s mezzadri. The trees also provided forage for animals and wood for fires and other household needs. Villifranchi focused on two systems: low training, associated with hilly and rocky areas, and high training, with vines married to trees in valleys and plains. For higher-quality wine grapes, “the vines must be kept low, because in this way they benefit better from the radiant energy of the sunlight and the virtue of the light reflected from the ground. High-trained vines produce insipid and weak wine and supported by trees or hedge maples produce sour and much less colorful juice.”11 Villifranchi wrote his treatise to win a competition created and sponsored by the Accademia dei Georgofili. Perhaps to appease its members who were patrician landholders wed to the mezzadria system, he presented positive aspects of the alberata system (vines trained on trees). Since the hedge maples supporting the vines, one on either side of its trunk, were planted far from other trees, the soil was not easily impoverished. Their branches also tended to grow separately from one another and to come out of the trunk at obtuse angles, allowing the vine foliage that clung to them to spread out. Air and light could thus penetrate the vine canopy. In addition to supporting the vine and its multiple bunches, Villifranchi recognized that the tree training method kept the grapes above the reach of many animals and thieves.12
During the period when Villifranchi was writing, Gaetano Gozzoli, a Cistercian monk from Tuscany, returned to Florence from a two-year stage (apprenticeship) in Burgundy with a French viticultural treatise and a pile of Burgundian vine wood in his travel trunk. The treatise, no longer extant, has been attributed to another Cistercian monk, Dom Denise from Burgundy. The Florentine abbot Domenico Sestini, a member of the Accademia dei Georgofili, translated it into Italian, as Delle viti e dei vini di Borgogna (About the vines and wines of Burgundy). This text shows that Burgundians were against what they considered unnecessary shading of the vines, such as that resulting from mixed agriculture and tree training. France had completely adopted ancient Greek viticulture: “There is no need that the vine should be shaded: the trees as a result damage the quality of the wines. There is no need to plant them among the vines. A vine shaded by trees, or by a wall, will always give a wine of mediocre quality.”13 That the viticultural debate continued, at a higher pitch, in the succeeding decades is confirmed by the topic of an essay competition sponsored by the Georgofili on September 24, 1820: “Determine if one should prefer the vine training system that uses a support pole or a hedge maple, considering differences in soil, climate, and the general situation.”14 The jury selected the manuscript of Sabatino Baldassarre Guarducci as the winning entry. It presents many reasons why the alberata system is preferable to stake-supported low training: if trees support the vines, farmers save the costs associated with stakes; it is expensive to plant a specialized vineyard; alberata provides higher yields; when vines are trained up trees, they are healthier and live longer; and climatic and other forces are likely to compromise the condition and health of the vines planted in low training. Guarducci conceded, however, that training on poles exposed vines to more sunlight and hence ensured a higher degree of maturation of the grapes.15 That his essay won the competition evidences that the Florentine landowners who controlled the Georgofili also wanted to control its message. Training vines up trees was integral to the polycultural system that allowed sharecroppers to cultivate land intensively to provide sustenance for their families year-round. Advocating this was tantamount to supporting the mezzadria system over the expansion of exports of high-quality wine.
Testucchio is a local Tuscan name for the Acer campestre, or hedge maple. The hedge maple has been in use as a support for vines for centuries. It is essentially a living trellis. It was better suited than other trees for the hills of Chianti, because it could grow in the dry and infertile soils that characterize most of Chianti. There were many names for the tree there. Firenzuola called it oppio (oppi in the plural),16 Falchini chioppio (chioppi in the plural), and Villifranchi added loppio and pioppo.17 Outside Tuscany, pioppo refers to the poplar, a tree better suited for the fertile and wet soils of the Po River Valley in northern Italy. The word testucchio came into usage at the end of the eighteenth century. It probably derives from testa (head), since the top of the tree trunk, as a result of pruning to support the vine, looks like a human head. Besides testucchio, the tree had other names in Tuscan dialect, such as tastucchio, stucchio, and fistucchio. À testucchio (to testucchio) referred to the system of running vines up trees with tree branches or reeds stuck into the ground to support the vines planted in between. With the institutionalization of the mezzadria system, vines were increasingly planted à testucchio. The ideal location was where the soil was deep and fertile enough to support tree growth. During the first half of the 1800s in Chianti, this system occurred not only in the fertile plains but also in the low hills, where it became increasingly used.18
Growing vines up trees is referred to as maritata, meaning that the vine is “married” to the tree (while training vines between and up trees is called alberata). In the testucchio system, two to four vines were trained on each tree. Each vine had two to four fruit-bearing canes, each of which generally carried eight to ten buds and sometimes more.19 The canes, which hung down from the branches of the tree, were often braided together.20 Such a testucchio carried a huge amount of fruit. The trees could also be planted in a row, with vines planted up them and between them in the row. Rows were six to ten meters (twenty to thirty-three feet) apart.21 Distances between the trees in the row varied from 2.5 to 3.5 meters (8.2 to 9.8 feet).22 Tree density could thus vary from 286 to 664 per hectare (116 to 269 per acre). The vine density was highly variable, from five hundred to one thousand per hectare (202 to 405 per acre).23 The lateral branches of the hedge maples, usually one on each side of the tree, grew along the row, nearly touching those of the trees on either side. These two bracciali (the plural of bracciale, “bracelet,” though the meaning here is closer to the root word braccio, “arm”) supported the one or two fruit-bearing canes of the vines planted below them. Each of these canes carried another eight to ten buds. So common was the use of bracciali in Chianti that this row system was called bracciali alla chiantigiana.24 Additional supports, usually reeds (canne, the plural of canna, a local bamboo), were stuck into the ground under the bracciali. The rows of hedge maples supporting the vines rose to about 4.5 meters (fifteen feet) high. The testucchi formed a wall of vegetation that usually surrounded a field where other crops were grown or covered a field themselves, in parallel lines. They looked like anguillari or pancate on stilts. Given all the buds available to bear fruit, à testucchio, planted by itself, in rows, or in the linked form, bracciali alla chiantigiana, was a massive producer of grapes. Unfortunately, they were rarely fully ripe, and the juice of each was dilute, low in sugar, and high in acidity. As a result, wine quality was very low. This system, however, protected the vines from extreme heat in the summer and absorbed excess humidity during rainy periods, thus reducing mold.
There was a wide mix of crops planted on either or both sides of the row of testucchi. Cereals, principally wheat, barley, and rye, were a vital nutritional necessity for mezzadri, but their harvests were meager in Chianti’s infertile higher hills. Different varieties of beans were grown, as was flax, which was used to make linen. Fruit trees provided fruit and wood (essential for making fires). The gelso (mulberry) was planted in Chianti to breed silkworms for Florence’s silk industry. However, in fertile, flat lowland areas, maize and potatoes were also planted.25 The sticks and vegetation from this arboreal polyculture were used as forage for the limited livestock in the possession of each mezzadro family. The competition for light among all these plants was disadvantageous for each. Their products were generally acceptable for domestic consumption but not for export to discriminating markets.
In the fertile areas of Chianti, such as valleys, mixed planting employing à testucchio dominated. The hillier regions, however, were known for the “vite bassa, e non broncone” (low vine, and not on broncone), as described by Francesco Redi, Cosimo III’s personal physician, in his late seventeenth-century poem Bacco in Toscana.26
The move away from vineyards to polycultural, higher-trained arrangements was slow and coincided with the expansion of the mezzadria system. Firenzuola, a champion of matching mountainous, stony vineyards with low-trained vines of the Sangiovese variety, was bitter at the advance of viticultural systems that produced more but lesser-quality grapes. He attributed this erosion of standards to a new generation of farmers who cared more about the quantity than the quality of the land’s bounty. However, he singled out the Greve River Valley and Chianti as the only two places where specialized viticulture endured:
Today there are fewer vineyards, particularly in infertile, mountainous, and hillside locations. Vineyards annoy modern farmers who can extract more fruit from vines planted in anguillari or pancate according to the new way of cultivation. The exception is in Val di Greve and in Chianti, as we see in the vineyards of Panzano, Radda, and similar, which are maintained and enlarged. Not only are they being maintained for the quality of the wines, and the goodness of the land, but most of this good work is done by the hands of the landholders, and all at their own expense.27
Combined with Firenzuola’s description of “precious” Sangiovese wine made in towns associated with the Monti del Chianti and the Greve River Valley, this statement establishes a culture of carefully managed vineyards of Sangiovese in Chianti and Val di Greve dating back to at least 1552. Based on his sensitive, expert, and detailed observations, it can be deduced that Chianti wine has its deepest roots not in Bettino Ricasoli in the mid-nineteenth century but in a period before the 1550s, perhaps as much as a century before. Firenzuola warned that if Tuscan landowners failed to invest capital and personal care in tending their vineyards, peasant farmers would impoverish the land by using it for mixed agriculture and pasturage, as in the fertile plains.28
Alberello-trained vines in Chianti were each supported by a stake, usually of chestnut wood, since chestnut forests thrive at elevations higher than where vines can ripen and thus were available in Chianti’s mountainous areas. According to Firenzuola, “One should stake the entire vineyard with chestnut stakes because in truth they support the vines better, and they last longer than any other type of wood that one could use.”29
Farmers in the steep hills of Chianti, particularly Lamole and Casole in the high hills south of Greve, customarily planted their staked alberello vines in rows along the gradient of the hill. Vines were positioned a meter (three feet) apart in the rows, which were also about a meter apart.30 These mezzadri constructed drystone walls from the rocks that they labored to clear to make the land arable. These walls ran along the contour of the hillside, particularly where the gradient was steep, creating terraces, where vines, olives, and other crops (typically wheat or beans) were planted.31 Hedge maples could not root or grow in this shallow, infertile, and rocky land.32 Small trees, such as olive and fruit trees, however, can grow in this sandy type of soil. Apple or cherry trees were sometimes planted among the vines.33 Olive trees were prized because the value of olives and olive oil was second only to that of wine (grapes were the sharecroppers’ most important cash crop). Though vines may have been trained up them, the principle value of these small trees to the sharecropping family was the fruit that they provided. Paolo Socci, the winegrower at Fattoria di Lamole, explained to us that before phylloxera, the vineyards of Lamole were specialized (except for scattered olive and fruit trees) and planted densely, at more than ten thousand vines per hectare (4,047 per acre). Other areas in Chianti, particularly where the soils were less sandy, supported more interplanting. The area was so associated with low training that this system (and the resulting wine) came to be called all’uso del Chianti (in the style of Chianti) when it was employed outside Chianti.34 In 1773, Tuscany’s grand duke Peter Leopold observed that in the hilly areas of Chianti the vines were trained low and the space between their rows was tight.35 During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the demand for wines that were of higher quality and that could be shipped made those of Chianti valuable. The superiority of the grapes grown in the Chianti manner naturally distinguished them from those of other areas.
When low-trained vines are planted on hills, there is a steady, if not sudden, erosion of topsoil that can destroy the hillside’s productivity and usefulness. Since Roman times, the practice of rittochino, planting rows down slopes, has been recognized as producing high-quality fruit, but at the expense of the topsoil. The combination of steep gradients, fast-draining soils, and planting in rittochino inevitably results in the ruin of the slope’s farming potential. The traditional system in Chianti of planting rows of vines along the contour of the slope impeded the rapid runoff of rainwater, allowing much of it to filter into the soil. Steeper slopes required the building of stone walls that would hold back the land to create terraces. On these terraces, vine rows ran parallel to the curve of the walls. The walls preferably faced south. This offered the vines cover from cold north winds. The radiant heat stored in the rocks warmed the vines, advancing their ripeness. Moisture that seeped through the walls was a natural form of irrigation.36 In Chianti in the eighteenth century, terraces were between five and twelve meters (sixteen and thirty-nine feet) wide—the steeper the incline, the narrower the width.37 Constructing them required the backbreaking work of countless sharecroppers to break up and excavate the rocks and strata of hardened clay, limestone, and sandstone below the topsoil.
Rainwater flowed down to the edges of rows and terraces and had to be channeled to be evacuated. Where there were terraces, it filtered through the topsoil into rockier soil banked against the lower, back side of each wall. Then the water trickled into, through, and down the terrace walls, at whose bases were stone troughs in which it collected before flowing into stone-lined ditches running down the hill’s slope.
Firenzuola placed such importance on the management of rainfall that he addressed it in the first chapter of his treatise. He advised farmers to build ditches, either open and lined with stones or covered channels called gattaiole (the plural of gattaiola), to channel runoff water into aqueducts. Gattaiola means “cat door” in Italian, and the channel was just wide enough for a cat to pass through. Firenzuola also recommended organizing the channels “à spinapesce.” Spinapesce, or “spine of the fish,” is a herringbone pattern. In this arrangement, small channels run diagonally down the gradient, emptying their contents into larger channels that run straight down.38
A little more than 150 years later, Falchini in his treatise emphasized the importance of creating aqueducts, “so that the water does not carry away the soil,” and of integrating stone terraces into drainage networks.39 He described two methods of constructing drainage ditches. One was to dig a ditch and fill it with rocks. The spaces between them would allow water to run off and would be less likely to become clogged by fine soil. The other was to make a gattaiola, as Firenzuola had directed.40
Villifranchi’s treatise also underscored the necessity of building a drainage system to protect the soil. He described how rain can destroy walls and carry away both soil and vines.41 Citing the advice of a noted French enologist, M. Bourgeois, he recommended removing, however, grass from near the vine to limit proliferation of harmful insects during rainy periods.42 He also recommended building drainage ditches across and at an oblique angle to the downslope.43 He warned against landslides, saying that channels for water evacuation were the best defense. His agricultural treatise also advises that planting trees and hedgerows, along with building strong rock walls, will help to protect the soil from erosion.44
Giovan Battista Landeschi in the late eighteenth century and Cosimo Ridolfi and Agostino Testaferrata in the early nineteenth developed systems of land restructuring for moderate and slight slopes. Since they minimized stone wall construction, they dramatically reduced the amount of labor required. In place of stone walls, Landeschi used embankments called ciglioni (the plural of ciglione, derived from ciglio, “eyelash,” because ciglioni look like eyelashes from a distance). Low-lying vegetation held their soil in place. A pescaiolo, essentially a sieve or net, was placed in a drainage ditch, to catch eroded dirt for reclamation. Landeschi’s system of ciglioni was being used by at least 1842 in Chianti Senese, as reported by Leonida Landucci, who called them piote, “turfs,” and mentioned pescaioli (the plural of pescaiolo).45 Ridolfi and Testaferrata’s system, called colmate di monte (landfills of the hill), integrated reshaped hillsides and an efficient drainage system called a spina (spine), perhaps inspired by what Firenzuola had described as à spinapesce three centuries before. Colmate di monte was most useful in the clay-rich, mudslide-susceptible areas of Tuscany, such as San Miniato, Empoli, and Castelfiorentino.
The remnants of Chianti’s viticultural past are hidden in plain sight for anyone who knows what to look for in these age-old hills. In restoring the terraces on his land, Socci uncovered a drainage system that sharecroppers had installed centuries before. He showed us the channels built into the terraces, in which water collected and drained down the hill. Following them to the base of his vineyards, Socci brought us to a pond that mezzadri had dug to collect the water. A stream had run downslope from it. Scrambling over brush, we followed him into a dark grotto. Stones were artfully positioned to form an arched ceiling. Through a hole we could see the sky. Socci explained that this was where an ancient turbine had spun. Powered by the flowing water, it had rotated one millstone above another. One of them was now lodged in the grass a few feet away. Runoff that could have ruined the vineyards had helped the mezzadri to transform their grain into flour!
At least since the Roman era, a layering system (propagginazione in Italian) has been utilized to replace old and dead vines in vineyards.46 Essentially, a farmer would dig a small trench about thirty centimeters (one foot) wide from a vine to a vacant spot that he wanted to fill with a new vine. In this trench he would bury a cane from the existing plant, with the apex rising out of the ground at the desired location. Shoots that grew from the apical buds would become the replacement vine. Underground, the “new” vine would grow its own root system, eventually separating from its mother vine. Firenzuola described a variation, calling it capogatto (capo referring to the “head” cane bent down and its tip buried, although how the cat [gatto] was involved in the process is a mystery).47 Falchini gave advice concerning what he referred to as “propagini” but did not use the term capogatto: ditches for canes must be no longer than “an arm and a half” for vines planted in a vineyard, an anguillare, or a pancata.48 Villifranchi advised burying the cane deeply but in light soil, so as to protect it from being dried by the rays of the sun but not entirely shielded from them. Putting manure in the ditch where the cane was buried would help nourish it while it grew underground.49 This was a foolproof method until phylloxera arrived (in the 1880s in Chianti), poisoning the soil for Vitis vinifera. A less successful method was to bury maglioli (budwood). A magliolo (the singular of maglioli) looks like a mallet, maglio in Italian, and is a two-year-old cane about one meter (three feet) in length. At one end is a short stub of a one-year-old cane, the head of the mallet. The farmer would push the two-year-old cane underground with a long iron implement with a deep slit at one end,50 leaving the one-year-old cane with its live buds exposed to the air and the sun. In this system, there was no mother plant to support the new plant in its infancy. It was used for planting a vineyard or a row of vines and particularly for replanting a vine next to a tree, such as a testucchio. In such a spot, the soil is very difficult to excavate.
Two years before planting a new vineyard or row of vines, the farmer would establish barbatelle. To create a barbatella (the singular of barbatelle), the farmer would remove a length of cane from a piece of two-year-old wood. The end with the older wood would be put into loose, moist soil, perhaps indoors in a stall, where the soil would be warm and there would be little light. With time, perhaps ten months or a year, a tuft of roots would develop around the wood underground. Removed from the soil, the tuft of roots looked like a beard. The Italian for “beard” is barba, and hence the name barbatella, “little beard,” the word still in use for vine wood ready for planting. In the fall before planting or earlier, the farmer would dig trenches one meter (about three feet) deep and one meter wide along the contour of the hillside or straight if the elevation was constant. He would pile large rocks at the bottom of the trench, then successively smaller ones until it was half filled. The stones allowed for drainage. The farmer would position the barbatelle in the middle of the trenches, equidistant from one another, and put loose, rich dirt around their roots. One could use maglioli instead of barbatelle, but the success rate was lower. Firenzuola was particularly protective of young plants: Do not plant the seeds of certain plants near maglioli or barbatelle. The worst enemy is cabbage, but also lavender, rosemary, sage, and other plants, which, though attractive, impoverish the soil and dry out and weaken the maglioli and continue to hurt the vines until they grow old.51
The vines were often planted in a quincunx (quinconce) pattern, an old Roman system that staggers their positions from row to row, making the rows visible when viewed from any angle. From an aesthetic perspective, the symmetry of the vine rows contrasts beautifully with the natural sweep of the terraces along the gradient. Vines planted quincuncially use space more efficiently than quadratic systems. Quincunx therefore allows for greater densities of vines, provided they are kept low to the ground, as is the case with alberello. Within several years, the vine would take the shape of a small tree and would be pruned back to the desired size whenever necessary. Retaining the same size from year to year is standard practice for all training systems, unless one is changed for another.
As early as 1833, Bettino Ricasoli concluded that mistakes were endemic to vine growing in Chianti. He believed that vines were planted too densely within each row, that leaving their heads without cordons forced canes to grow directly from the trunk, that sowing crops among the rows allowed vegetation to bury grape bunches, and that leaves were stripped from low-trained vines too early.52
In his Regolamento agrario of 1843, he advised that vines be trained low on hills and where exposures were excellent and that the testucchio system be used with discretion, near streams and in flat areas.53 On May 5, 1844, at a meeting of the Accademia dei Georgofili, he described how, under his direction, the mezzadri worked in the vineyards of Brolio:
They prune in March, leaving on each cane two buds; it is rare for them to leave four buds, and they do so only when the vines are very vigorous, responding to the fertility of the soil. In April they hoe furrows around the vines; they do so to turn over the soil and cut those roots that are near the surface, employing that useful tool the two-pronged hoe. Next, at the appropriate time they remove excess shoots, so that the vegetative force will not be diverted from the two or four buds that have been left. They carefully tie the canes [near the top of] the supporting stake and cut them off there. In July, they perform another task at the base of the vine’s trunk. This is the simple removal of weeds. This would be the last task if it were not our principal goal to divert all the plant’s vigor to the maturing grape bunches. In mid-September, using a machete, they cut off the canes growing down from the top of the stake, but they do not cut away the vine leaves near the grape bunches until the harvest.54
Ricasoli understood that channeling the energy of the plant at the right time was the way to get concentrated and ripe fruit. Leaving two gemme (buds) per tralcio (cane) essentially made that stubby cane a sperone, “spur,” and hence what he described was more similar to a head-trained cordon system such as alberello than to typical cane pruning.
He was known to inspect his sharecroppers’ vineyards and to order that they correct their transgressions and mistakes. His reputation as a scolding dogmatist has become part of Castello di Brolio’s terroir. There are legends that when the moon is full, he returns to the castle to ascertain that everything is in order. Giovanna Morganti of Le Boncie recounted that as a child growing up not far from Brolio she was afraid to go out at night for fear that she would be confronted by the ghost of the Iron Baron riding a white stallion through the countryside.
According to the encyclopedic Villifranchi, various snails, spiders, beetles, moths, and butterflies were among the enemies of the vine farmer. The remedy he prescribed was basic: the men, women, and children of the sharecropping family should go out into the vineyards periodically and crush or burn whatever bugs they could find.55 Powdery mildew (called oidium in Europe) would not be as easy to extinguish. It is a mold that thrives in dry, windy conditions. Powdery mildew arrived in Chianti in 1851. In that year it was found at Brolio.56 It spread throughout Italy and caused massive devastation in 1852 and 1853. Three-quarters of the Tuscan grape production was lost in 1853. Desperate farmers tried to rinse off the mold or clean it off with soap.57 The crisis persisted for about five years. Ricasoli looked to mechanical farming in the Maremma as an alternative means of support.58 Sulfur dust was employed against powdery mildew in Tuscany beginning in 1853. By 1855, Ricasoli had noted its protective effect and regarded it as the solution to the problem. Its use, however, was slow to be implemented.59
Downy mildew (called peronospora in Europe) was noted in 1876 in the vineyards of Castello di Brolio.60 It propagates best in still air and warm, humid conditions. Because Chianti has a dry and ventilated growing environment, it gets only sporadic downy mildew infestations, such as where dew or fog collects. Copper sulfate, part of the well-known Bordeaux mixture (with lime and water), was recognized as an effective prophylactic. But because the occurrences of downy mildew were relatively rare, farmers did not apply regular treatments, leaving their vineyards vulnerable to those occasional circumstances when conditions for downy mildew were favorable. Woe to them! When downy mildew hits an unprotected vineyard, the devastation is rapid and can be complete.
Downy mildew was followed by phylloxera (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae), a vine louse. The first recorded infestation in Chianti was at Castello di Brolio in 1885.61 However, the spread into the surrounding areas was slow. Each podere was isolated from its neighbors, and since most of Chianti’s vines were interplanted with other crops, the vine louse had farther to go to get from one vine to the next. Additionally, the fast-draining, sandy soils of many areas of Chianti were not hospitable to the louse. Still, phylloxera began a slow but steady march through Chianti. By the 1930s, the infestation, from whatever source, had affected all of the townships in the provinces of Florence and Siena.
The successive vineyard scourges of the nineteenth century forced Tuscans to take a more scientific approach to viticulture. The mezzadri (and their padroni) were helpless in the face of these diseases. The reason became clear. The fungus in the cases of powdery mildew and downy mildew and the tiny insect in the case of phylloxera came from a place, eastern North America, where the native vines had developed resistance to them. In Europe they attacked the European vine variety, Vitis vinifera, which was not resistant. The prophylactic measures to protect Vitis vinifera had to be the result of scientific analysis and experimentation.
The replanting of Chianti’s vineyards in the wake of the phylloxera infestation gradually replaced diseased vines with vines on resistant rootstocks. The varieties grafted on to these rootstocks were more consistent with the Ricasoli wine formula than ever before, leading to a loss of diversity of vine biotypes in Chianti during the late 1800s and the first half of the twentieth century. Pompeo Trentin, writing in 1895, described the Chianti blend of his time as 70 percent Sangiovese, 20 percent Canaiolo Nero, and 10 percent Trebbiano or Malvasia (or a blend of the two).62 As a result, Sangiovese became dominant in the vineyards. Trebbiano Toscano was increasingly substituted for Malvasia Bianca because it was easier to grow, gave higher yields, and, when vinified, was more resistant to oxidation.
During the 1870s, there were reports in Italy of a flattened alberello configuration of vines supported on steel wires strung between oak and chestnut stakes. Two or three buds were left on each of three, four, or more spurs per vine.63 The objective was to provide enough space between the rows to allow the movement of ox-drawn implements and machines. In France, this system is called éventail (fan), because it has a fan-shaped appearance. In Italy today it is called candelabra, because the vines look like flattened candelabra.
Villifranchi had reported that “uv[e] forestier[e]” (foreign grapes) were planted in the Medici estates and gardens surrounding Florence.64 In the preface to his translation of the Burgundian viticultural treatise that Gaetano Gozzoli had brought to Tuscany, Domenico Sestini described how this Cistercian monk had also collected the best cuttings of vine wood that he could find during his two-year stay in Burgundy and had sent twenty thousand in two shipments to the Medici fattorie of Artimino, Ginestre, Lappeggi, Castello, and Boboli and to the Villa della Querce. Some of these cuttings had been given to other prominent estates around Florence and elsewhere in Tuscany.65 Giuseppe Acerbi in 1825 compiled a list of varieties grown in the vicinity of Florence. He listed Borgogna Nera (black Burgundy) and Borgogna Bianca (white Burgundy), along with Rossetto di Francia (French red) and Bianchetto di Francia (French white).66 Ricasoli traveled to France in 1851, and on his return to Brolio he purchased cuttings of foreign vine varieties to create an experimental vineyard.67 In 1876, Egidio Pollacci listed the ones that Ricasoli had planted around 1870. The baron had collected cuttings and had planted Tinto Morello, Alvalhao, Maurisca, Pandura, and Malvagia from Portugal; Alicante, Dorcalados, Moscadello Ulter, and Morastello from Spain; Carignon, Carmenet, Provenza Nero, Provenza Bianco, Hermitage, Terret San Giorgio, Ulliade San Giorgio, and Alicante San Giorgio from France; and Harsevelii Tokai and Furmint from Hungary. The table of data that Pollacci compiled compared the sugar levels of musts from Ricasoli’s experimental international varietal wines with corresponding data from Ricasoli’s Sangioveto, Canaiuolo, and Malvagia wines.68 In 1895, Trentin identified the Pinots of Burgundy, the Cabernets of Bordeaux, the Gamay of Beaujolais, and the Riesling of the Rhine area as of recent importation into Tuscany and reported that they were being used in blends with local varieties to introduce new aromas.69 Salvatore Mondini wrote in 1903 that Ippolito Pestellini at Bagno a Ripoli just southeast of Florence was cultivating Gamay, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon, and Roussanne.70 To make his “vini uso Chianti” ready to drink and to stabilize their color, he blended in Syrah with the Sangiovese, Canaiolo, and Trebbiano.71 He blended Cabernet Sauvignon with Sangiovese to increase the finesse of his Chianti-type wines. Mondini wrote that Cabernet Sauvignon had been introduced “on a large scale” in the province of Siena and was recognized as the one French variety that blended with Sangiovese to produce a wine “veramente fino ed apprezzabile” (truly fine and appreciable).72 Nonetheless, these attempts to root foreign vines in Chianti did not succeed. Among the many forces against their introduction were the chaos and hardship caused by the phylloxera infestation, two world wars, and the eventual dissolution of the mezzadria system.
In the early 1900s, small, high-density, specialized vineyards began to be planted in Chianti. According to Paolo Nanni, a researcher in the history of agriculture at the University of Florence, the average price of “Chianti” wine per hectoliter was very high during the first third of the twentieth century, which helped some padroni and mezzadri to make the switch to monoculture. Though there were many variations of intervine and interrow spacings, rows were generally 1.5 to 2 meters (4.9 to 6.6 feet) apart and vines in the row 0.8 meters (2.6 feet) apart. Professor Nino Breviglieri, who was the viticultural expert for the Georgofili’s 1957 conference on Chianti, listed some fifteen sites that were planted in this manner from 1900 to 1920.73 Sharecroppers usually resisted the efforts of proprietors to convince them to do the same. With few exceptions, most mezzadri clung to promiscuous plantings, because these suited their needs for self-sufficiency. They replaced each vine as it died. Given that propaggine was no longer a viable method, because of the phylloxera infestation, sharecroppers became skilled at dry grafting (also known as field grafting). The planting of specialized vineyards and the replacement of vines killed by phylloxera were achieved by dry-grafting Sangiovese, Canaiolo, Ciliegiolo, Malvasia Bianca, Trebbiano, and Colorino on to phylloxera-resistant rootstocks, most commonly 420A.
The high prices of Casole and Lamole wine during the 1930s allowed mezzadri families living there to subsist on their wine production.74 Socci, the present-day resident historian-winegrower of Fattoria di Lamole, reported that there were two planting arrangements in Lamole in the postphylloxera period. In flatter vineyards, the rows of vines were three meters (ten feet) apart, wide enough for a pair of oxen to pull a plow between the rows, where grain was planted. On steeper slopes, the rows were closer together, with about 5,500 vines per hectare (2,226 per acre). At that time, grain also was planted in these narrower rows (unlike in the prephylloxera period). Olive trees were planted here and there. On these steeper slopes, all the cultivation was done by hand, with either a hoe or a shovel.
From 1950 to the mid-1970s, sharecropping families abandoned Chianti, taking with them generations of unwritten knowledge about every aspect of their farms and their vines. They alone knew the land stone by stone. Mezzadri families had given names to each of their vineyards. Not only were almost all of these names lost to history, but so were many vineyards, since they went into disuse and disappeared. The genetic reservoir of Chianti’s vine population was severely depleted, reducing the potential of the zone. The terraces, which required regular upkeep, began to crumble. Without sharecropper manpower, the fattorie could no longer function as they had done for centuries. Many landholders sold their fattorie, poderi, and villas because they could not imagine a way forward.
The agricultural system that was left over from sharecropping days was not adaptable to mechanization. In 1962, 99 percent of vineyard areas in the province of Siena and 96 percent in the province of Florence were still planted in the promiscuous system.75 Before 1964, there were little more than 900 hectares (2,224 acres) of specialized vineyards in the Chianti Classico appellation, while promiscuous culture extended over 8,277 hectares (20,453 acres).76
The decade of conversion from promiscuous to specialized cultivation (i.e., vineyards) was the 1970s. Before then, the area under specialized cultivation had increased only gradually, while that under promiscuous cultivation had remained stable. But from 1970 to 1977, promiscuous cultivation declined, from 8,178 to 6,122 hectares (20,208 to 15,127 acres), and there was a sudden increase in the surface of specialized cultivation, from 2,648 to 6,877 hectares (6,543 to 16,993 acres).77
Large agricultural machines were first introduced to Chianti at this time. Bulldozers plowed through ancient stone terraces and altered the contours of hillsides. There was little thought given to replacing the centuries-old drainage systems. Vineyards were planted at densities of 2,500 vines per hectare (1,012 per acre) because the associated spacing allowed easy access for tractors. New Fiat tractors needed rows at least 2.7 meters (9 feet) wide. The typical spacing became 3 meters (9.8 feet) between rows and 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) separating vines in the row.78 The small terraced vineyards of Chianti were replaced by larger vineyards, often in valleys or with exposures that did not allow ripening before the onset of autumn rains. Viticulture of the 1960s and 1970s espoused the dogma of clean cultivation—“cleaning” the topsoil of all vegetation except the vines. This minimized competition for soil nutrients and water, thus, maximizing yields. It also, however, encouraged farmers to use the faster and less expensive but also less environmentally friendly option of herbicide application rather than the mechanical removal of weeds. Clean cultivation, by whatever means, increased erosion rates and destroyed natural flora and fauna in the topsoil. Synthetic fertilizers replaced natural ones such as manure. Combining synthetic chemicals with compaction by heavy machinery was a death sentence for the ecological diversity of the topsoil.
While new vineyards occupied Chianti’s lower and middle slopes, the higher slopes, where grapes were less likely to consistently ripen, were left to oak, chestnut, and coniferous trees.79 Vine rows were planted down the slopes in rittochino. Where the gradient was too steep and the soil loose, erosion became a problem. The present-day winegrower Jurij Fiore at Poggio Scalette in Ruffoli reported that one vineyard where he worked had lost all its topsoil. He realized that whoever had prepared the vineyard in the 1970s had simply dumped a layer of topsoil on the hard rocks below. It had gradually washed away.
During and after World War II, vine nurseries sprang up to meet the demand for barbatelle. Though those in Friuli led the field in technology and volume of grafts, others appeared throughout Tuscany. In 1940, a nursery started at Settimo in Scandicci.80 There was another at Ferrone at the northern end of Chianti Classico and one at Pianella at the southern end. With the advent of these nurseries, field grafters disappeared in Chianti.
The most popular rootstock of the first half of the century was 420A, followed by Kober 5BB. Rootstock 420A had good drought and high active lime resistance. Because it reduced the vegetative growth of the scion, it also reduced labor costs. Kober 5BB, which Breviglieri praised as “the rootstock well adapted for good ecopedologic conditions in our climate,” dominated 1960s and 1970s vineyard plantings.81 It encouraged high yields per plant. The Vitiarium project at San Felice, however, in the 1990s showed this rootstock to have been one of the causes of the lack of concentration of Chianti Classico wines in the 1960s and 1970s.
Any arrangement of branches or poles and wires supporting a vine is called a trellis. The vine does best with this kind of structure because it is a clinging plant. Bracciali alla chiantigiana is an example of a trellis with living support, a tree. A pergola is an example using an overhead network of wood or metal poles. Late nineteenth-century row trellises were quite basic, with perhaps only stakes and one wire. Twentieth-century systems became more complicated, employing a bottom, or cordon, wire; a second, or shoot, wire or a pair of wires, called catch wires, above the cordon wire; and another set of catch wires above them, through which foliage and fruit were channeled. There could even be another set of catch wires at the top of the trellis.
Training systems rely on trellises because of the vine’s need for support. Until the 1990s, the system of choice in the newly planted vineyards of Chianti was Tuscan arched cane, called capovolto, named for the dominant fruit-bearing cane, or capo, and the process of bending it to tie it to the bottom wire in the row, volto (from the verb voltare, meaning “to turn or to round”). Each vine could have one or two capi (the plural of capo), one being best for a lower-vigor growing situation. One or two renewal spurs could also be positioned on the trunk below the capi. The arching allowed denser foliage and higher yields. Because the cane was arched, its bunches were at different heights, a problem for machine harvesting. This system required skill for proper training, a surprising choice given the other strides toward mechanization in this period. Though it was criticized in the 1990s, it is now having a revival. Single and double Guyot (widely used in Bordeaux) are similar to capovolto, with one or two canes, respectively, tied flat along the bottom wire. Guyot was used contemporaneously with capovolto. Cordone speronato, a system once common in Burgundy, where it is known as cordon de Royat, was subsequently adopted. Short spurs (speroni, the plural of sperone) bearing buds grew from one or two low-lying permanent branches called cordone (cordons). The buds became fruit- and leaf-bearing shoots. Like Guyot, there are single and double cordon versions. The capovolto, Guyot, and cordone speronato systems remain in use today.
During the 1970s, Valerio Barbieri became the first freelance consulting agronomist in Chianti. He had graduated from Arezzo’s Istituto Tecnico Agrario (Technical agrarian institute) with a specialty in viticulture. His first job was as a technician in the University of Florence’s experimental farm. In the late 1960s, Giacomo Tachis recommended him to Isole e Olena, in Barberino Val d’Elsa, where he became the manager. While he was there, his friendship with Tachis grew. In 1972 he left Isole e Olena and began to consult for individual estates, principally in the Chianti Classico zone and often at Tachis’s recommendation. Since Tachis needed high-quality grapes, he advised growers who sold wine to Antinori to have Barbieri select the exposures, design the preparatory work (including digging up the vineyard to provide a long-lasting base for the vines), choose the vine material such as rootstocks and scions, determine the vine spacing and the training system, and hire the necessary people. Barbieri started off recommending many of the same choices that were being made across the zone in this period, such as the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and fungicides. Tachis needed vine varieties to give color and structure to his wines. Beginning in the 1970s, he suggested to vineyard owners that they hire Barbieri to plant Cabernet Sauvignon; soon after, Merlot, and later, Petit Verdot, joined Cabernet. Tachis and Barbieri advised replacing Canaiolo and white grape varieties, particularly Trebbiano and Malvasia Bianca, with these Bordeaux varieties. Syrah, a variety that Tachis was less familiar with, arrived later. During the 1990s Barbieri planted Syrah for several of his clients.
Barbieri now considers himself a viticulturalist of “precision and quality,” which means one who takes carefully targeted and measured actions that result in high-quality outcomes. With one word, Basta! (enough!), he describes how much his viticultural philosophy has changed. Gone are the days of massive chemical sprays, excessive soil additions, and vineyards designed to produce a high volume of grapes with an absolute minimum of labor. Instead of removing all the competing vegetation in a vineyard, he now advocates selecting cover crops to meet the needs of the topsoil. By his own admission, Barbieri has planted most of the vineyards in Chianti Classico. Given the impact of his work, one would think that he would be as well known as Tachis. This shows how much the role of viticulture has been overlooked. Gradually easing into retirement, he has given up clients far from home, such as in Sardinia and Apulia. His daughter Elisabetta, with a University of Florence degree in agrarian sciences, has increasingly helped to support and advise his clients (in both their vineyards and their cellars).
One consulting agronomist who has had a limited but important impact during the 1990s and 2000s is Remigio Bordini. From 1968 to 1982, he was the technical director of the Experimental Institute of Tebano, a wing of the University of Bologna. There he developed the T19 clone, also called RL Bosche. Working in tandem in Tuscany with the consulting enologist Vittorio Fiore, he provided agronomic advice to several of Fiore’s client estates. During the late 1980s, Bordini made his mark at Podere Il Carnasciale in the Valdarno di Sopra area. There he advised the creation of a small vineyard with densely planted, staked alberello of a variety, Caberlot, that he had discovered and developed. Il Carnasciale became an example of how alberello could play a role in Chianti Classico. Along with Fiore, Bordini was also engaged, as a consulting agronomist, at Terrabianca, Le Miccine, and Candialle.
Roberto Bandinelli has been one of the key researchers of the Vitiarium project at the San Felice wine estate in Castelnuovo Berardenga since the mid-1980s. He is well known for his dedicated and passionate interest in the viticulture of Chianti. He drives around Chianti’s vineyards so often that one of his colleagues at the University of Florence has joked that if you get into a car accident in Chianti, it could very well involve Bandinelli. Seeing the light in Bandinelli’s eyes when he speaks about the vines that he has studied reveals more than any viticultural treatise ever could about his commitment to Chianti’s vineyards.
In 1974, Enzo Morganti, the manager of the San Felice estate, invited the University of Florence’s Department of Horticulture to collaborate in research, using San Felice as its base. Bandinelli later joined the professors Piero Luigi Pisani Barbacciani and Franco Scaramuzzi in developing protocols, and San Felice hosted a vineyard called the Vitiarium (Nursery of vine varieties) and offered the use of other vineyards, all for practical viticultural research and innovation. The program had six areas of study: clonal selection; the relative importance of different aspects of viticulture, such as vine density, rootstock selection, vine training methods, and pruning methods; the selection, classification, and preservation of native varieties called viziati (from vizzati, varieties); the performance of non-Tuscan and other nonnative varieties at San Felice; the improvement of grafting over to other varieties; and the examination of how Sangiovese, Trebbiano Toscano, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Chardonnay vines planted on their own roots fared given the presence of phylloxera in the soils of Chianti.
The third project, that of the old native vines, or viziati, was the most ambitious. Its goal was to reclaim the genetic heritage of Chianti. Three hundred vines were selected for study. Every podere and fattoria in Chianti had its own unique population of vine varieties. Some of them had been commonly identified. Many had not. These varieties had been selected by generations of mezzadri families or promoted by fattori. They were used as “spices” to give color, aroma, alcohol, acid, or structure to a podere’s or fattoria’s wines. The mezzadri and fattori often kept their viziati secret so they could differentiate their wines from those of others.
The Vitiarium is a two-hectare (five-acre) vineyard. Dozens of viziati have been propagated and studied there, and subsequently microvinified. Among them was Foglia Tonda. By the 1870s, Brolio had a significant quantity of this variety in its vineyards.82 According to Bandinelli, it can still be found in vineyards both in the vicinity of Tenuta di Arceno in Castelnuovo Berardenga in southeast Chianti Classico and near Castellina Scalo in southwest Chianti Classico. Pugnitello was another variety that the Vitiarium team selected for investigation, because of its unique characteristics. Because it was difficult to grow, to ripen, and to achieve abundant yields of Pugnitello, winegrowers used this viziato (the singular of viziati) in limited amounts, as a secret weapon to give their wines deeper color, spicier smells, and greater structure. Two other viziati, Abrusco and Abrostine, have gone through vinification trials. They both strongly tint and add astringency to wine. The work of Bandinelli and other Vitiarium researchers has made it possible for viziati biotypes to be inscribed in Italy’s National Registry of Grape Varieties.
Since the 2006 Brunello scandal, which brought attention to the fact that international varieties were masking the character of Sangiovese wine, the trend has been to increase the percentage of Sangiovese in Chianti Classico blends. Annatas now average about 90 percent Sangiovese. Producers can use any of forty-nine complementary red grape varieties, both native and international, suited for cultivation in the region of Tuscany, per the Chianti Classico discipline.83 Another trend since 2006 has been to increase the percentage of native varieties that fill out the blend. The following list of the ten most important native and international varieties in Chianti Classico blends does not include white grape varieties such as Malvasia Bianca Lunga (alias Malvasia del Chianti) or Trebbiano Toscano, as their use in Chianti Classico has been forbidden since 2006 and was insignificant for several decades before then. The three international varieties, grouped at the bottom of the list, are all of French origin.
Canaiolo plantings have been on a steady downturn in Chianti Classico since the 1970s, when between 10 and 30 percent of the vines planted were of this variety. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot took its place in the Chianti Classico blend.
Canaiolo ripens earlier than Sangiovese, but it is harder to grow. According to Luca Martini di Cigala at San Giusto a Rentennano, “Canaiolo is very sensitive to weather. One year it is good; another year it is bad.” Canaiolo wine today tends to be pale, to brown quickly, and to have a perfume that is at first vibrant but then diminishes after a year. Its acidity is usually lower than that of Sangiovese. It tastes bitter rather than astringent.
Maybe we are missing the real Canaiolo. Giulio Gambelli, the master taster and wine consultant, thought that it was put on the wrong rootstocks after the phylloxera epidemic. Many of its best biotypes have disappeared. The consulting enologist Marco Chellini believes that before phylloxera, two biotypes of Canaiolo were used, Canaiolo grande, which made a wine that resembled Sangiovese, and Canaiolo piccolo, which had small, dark berries and made darker wine. Canaiolo grande may be the one that has survived, and Canaiolo piccolo may have been lost. This explains why commentators of the nineteenth century wrote about how dark, full in body, and bitter with aging Canaiolo wine could be.84 Chellini has begun using more Canaiolo in the blend when he needs alcohol levels lower than what Sangiovese has been giving him. He also likes its red-currant bouquet. Martini di Cigala reports that during the 1970s, a lot of low-quality Canaiolo was planted. He identifies Cacchiano, on the other hand, as a site with excellent Canaiolo genetic material. Ormanni, Castello della Paneretta, I Sodi, and Villa Calcinaia are other Chianti Classico estates that make Canaiolo varietal wines.
Ciliegiolo, an ancient variety, is one of the genetic parents of Sangiovese. There is a significant amount of it planted along the southwestern coastline of Tuscany, and it is more widely planted in Chianti Classico than most people recognize. Since it is difficult to tell them apart by appearance, many winegrowers mistake Ciliegiolo for Sangiovese. Its lower acidity and astringency usefully soften Sangiovese’s harder acidic and tannic edge. According to Fabrizio Bianchi of Monsanto, in Chianti it is found higher than Sangiovese because of its tendency to ripen earlier. In 1911, Vittorio Racah advised that it be planted at elevations between five hundred and eight hundred meters (1,640 to 2,625 feet) along with international varieties such as Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon.85 At Monteraponi in Radda, Michele Braganti reports that it ripens a few days before Sangiovese. Quercia al Poggio in Barberino Val d’Elsa near the western edge of Chianti Classico takes a particular interest in Ciliegiolo. It produces a 50–50 Ciliegiolo-Sangiovese IGT blend, Le Cataste. At Badia a Coltibuono in Gaiole, Roberto Stucchi says that Ciliegiolo ripens as many as fifteen days earlier than Sangiovese. He adds that its wine also has more color initially but becomes pale quickly unless it is blended with Sangiovese, which helps to stabilize it.
Racah, a professor and viticultural researcher with an intimate knowledge of central Tuscany, particularly Chianti, wrote of Ciliegiolo in 1911, “Only for a few years has it been cultivated in Tuscany, and its provenance is unknown.”86 A few years earlier, he had proposed that Chianti be delimited by its geology. Perhaps Ciliegiolo was present there then, but he had not culled it from Sangiovese. As early as 1600, the Florentine Giovan Vettorio Soderini had mentioned a variety, Ciregiuolo, that grew well in hot locations and made a sweet and aromatic wine. He cited a variety, Ceruelliera (also called Orzese), whose secondary bunches resembled Ciregiuolo, and “like Sangioueto” produced an enormous volume of wine.87 Villifranchi mentioned a Ciliegiana and both an Orzese comune (common) and an Orzese piccolo (small).88 Pier Antonio Micheli, writing around 1730, listed a Ciliegiona “tonda, rossa di Spagna” (round, red of Spain), whose description corresponds with that of Ottaviano Targioni Tozzetti’s “Vite Ciliegio’na Tonda di Spagna.”89 The characteristics that these commentators noted, regular and high productivity and roundish grapes, are both consistent with today’s Ciliegiolo. Given its predilection for high altitudes and ability to balance Sangiovese in wine blends, one wonders why Ciliegiolo either was not recognized or did not exist in Chianti prior to Racah. In the early twentieth century, the southwestern coast of Tuscany, where it has a strong presence now, was not the focus of winemaking. One reason for its presence there and not in the interior might have been the Spanish. Micheli and Targioni Tozzetti indicate a Spanish origin. Micheli believed that Cosimo III de’ Medici brought the variety from Madrid. It could have arrived in Tuscany via the south of Italy or Sardinia, both of which were under Spanish control for centuries. Given their genetic relationship, to understand Sangiovese, it is essential to understand Ciliegiolo.
As early as 1843, Ricasoli advised his mezzadri to use “qualche vitigno di colore” (some coloring vine variety) to give color (and structure) to the lesser wines.90 Colorino (whose name means “little colorful one” in Italian) is the variety that contemporary traditionalists have used to darken and give structure to Sangiovese wine, including Chianti Classico blends. (Chianti Classico color can be deepened by small amounts of a wide range of varietal wines, made from grapes including Abrusco, Alicante Bouschet, Ancellotta, Bracciola Nera, Lambrusco Maestri, Mondeuse Noire, Refosco dal Penduncolo Rosso, and Teroldego Nero.) There are a number of Colorinos, each being a separate variety.91 Several have pigmented pulp. The type that is most present in Chianti Classico is Colorino del Valdarno. Its pulp contains little or no pigment. The skin, however, has plenty, and a great deal of tannins. Gambelli advised his clients to use it when they had color problems. In 1997, Montevertine planted Colorino to counter the criticism of many journalists and customers that its wines were too pale. Socci says that Colorino was not traditional in the Lamole uvaggio (grape blend). Bandinelli confirms this, although Lamole, with its characteristically pale wines, would seem to have needed it. Lorenzo Landi is a consulting enologist who has used the variety often to darken and give structure to wines. He has even registered his own clones. Tommaso Marrocchesi Marzi has planted 1,500 Colorino vines to add color to his vineyards at Bibbiano. In the autumn, their leaves turn a brilliant red.
Brolio has had Foglia Tonda planted since at least the late nineteenth century. Giovanna Morganti reports that it is native to Chianti Senese. According to her, it was planted at Brolio in the most calcareous spots, to give delicacy to the wine. Francesco Ricasoli at Brolio reports that there was some Foglia Tonda in the vineyards there until the 1990s, when it was removed. Also in Gaiole, Badia a Coltibuono has Foglia Tonda in its vineyards. In Castelnuovo Berardenga, Morganti has some at her estate, Le Boncie. So does the San Felice estate. Renzo Marinai in Panzano lists Foglia Tonda first among the varieties in his Kádár, a red wine that is macerated on its skins for several months. According to Vittorio Fiore, it is less productive than Sangiovese.
Malvasia Nera is a group of vine varieties. The first “Malvasia Nera” came from Greece via Venetian merchants sometime during the Renaissance. The current list of allowed Chianti Classico varieties includes three Malvasias: Malvasia Nera, Malvasia Nera di Brindisi, and Malvasia Nera di Lecce. Malvasia Nera is likely the Greek variety originally introduced by the Venetians. There might not be much of it planted in Tuscany today.92 In 2008, DNA profiling showed that Malvasia Nera di Brindisi and Malvasia Nera di Lecce are identical.93
More and more, producers in Chianti agree that what they call Malvasia Nera is closely related or identical to the Spanish variety Tempranillo. They say that it adds a smooth middle-mouth texture to Sangiovese and that it has low acidity and a high pH. Tempranillo could have come to Tuscany via southern Italy, which the Spanish controlled for centuries, or via Sardinia, which Aragon occupied in 1324. Cosimo Trinci, writing in 1738, praised a variety that he called both Navarrino and Navarra. He described it as an early ripener that had “almost black” grape skins and served as an excellent component in wine blends. His description recalls Tempranillo.94
Malvasia Nera is an increasingly popular filler in the Chianti Classico and Tuscan IGT wine blends. Castello di Ama’s Bellavista Chianti Classico and Capannelle’s Solare, an IGP, are usually about 80 percent Sangiovese and 20 percent Malvasia Nera. Castellare’s I Sodi di San NiccolÒ, an IGP, contains 85 percent Sangiovese and 15 percent Malvasia. Malvasia Nera has been replacing nonnative varieties in Chianti Classico’s vineyards.
Mammolo buds after Sangiovese, but ripens its bunches around the same time. Morganti reports that it grows well in fertile soil. It has big berries and a high pH and makes a pale wine that is easy to drink. Badia a Coltibuono and Le Boncie use it in their blend. Though an old Tuscan variety, Mammolo has increasingly lost favor, since it makes wines that are pale, low in alcohol (not such a bad thing!), and subject to oxidation.
Pugnitello, hidden like a secret weapon in some old vineyards, attracted interest at the Vitiarium. San Felice produces an excellent varietal example that is dark purple and very spicy in the nose. The samples since 2003 have not had a distinct profile. The acidity and the astringency change year by year. Leonardo Bellaccini, the winemaker, reports that because the first few buds on the San Felice Pugnitello canes do not produce fruit, he uses the cane-pruning system Guyot. Montemaggio has made one barrique of Pugnitello. Ilaria Anichini, its manager and winemaker, says this is a risky variety because it ripens very late and is sensitive to disease.
During the first years of the 2000s, Cabernet Sauvignon went out of favor in Chianti Classico. Its bell pepper smell is less and less present in finished wine blends. Marinai makes a very dark and juicy Chianti Classico that is 10 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 90 percent Sangiovese. He harvests Cabernet very late, even at the beginning of November. Since it has a long growing season, it matures more regularly in the warmer areas of Chianti Classico. For this reason, Enrico Pozzesi says it does better than Merlot at Rodano in southwestern Castellina.
Merlot is widespread throughout Chianti Classico. It ripens about ten days ahead of Sangiovese and is usually planted in richer, wetter, and less stony soils and in cooler spots. It is more frost resistant than Sangiovese. Thus, it usually gets planted at the base of hills. The variety gives color, thickness in the mouth, and structure to Sangiovese. Ripe Merlot wine has little smell. Anichini at Montemaggio believes that 5 to 7 percent does not noticeably alter the flavor of Sangiovese wine.
During the 1980s, Paolo De Marchi at Isole e Olena brought Syrah back into Chianti Classico after an absence of eighty years. It is harvested earlier than Sangiovese, to whose wine it adds color and structure. Its wine is more violet-tinted than Merlot, yet has a stronger, earthier smell and is coarser in the mouth. In the late 1980s and 1990s, De Marchi was making Chianti Classico with 10 percent Syrah. Now he uses 5 percent or less. Interest in Syrah has been on the wane in Chianti Classico since the early 2000s.
By the late 1980s it was clear, particularly in the light of the success of Super Tuscans and Brunello di Montalcino, that Chianti Classico wines had failed to represent the highest aspirations of the zone’s producers. The vineyards of the 1960s and 1970s would need to be replanted by the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 1987, the Chianti Classico consortium launched the Chianti Classico 2000 project. It took sixteen years to complete and involved sixteen experimental vineyards encompassing twenty-five hectares (sixty-two acres) and eighty-nine thousand vines. Moreover, the project set up ten meteorological stations to collect climatic data. The topics studied in these vineyards were the characteristics of scion clonal material (particularly that of Sangiovese), vine density, techniques of soil cultivation, vine training systems, rootstock selection, and the impact of viral diseases and botrytis on the vines in the zone. The project focused on traditional Chianti Classico varieties: Sangiovese, Canaiolo, and Colorino. Researchers initially identified 239 presumptive biotypes for consideration. Of these, thirty-four were determined to be free of viruses and hence qualified for further study, including twenty-four Sangiovese, eight Canaiolo, and two Colorino.95 At the conclusion of the project, seven Sangiovese CCL clones and one Colorino clone (COLO-RO 2000/8) were listed in Italy’s National Registry of Grape Varieties and released at no cost to nurseries for propagation and sale to the public.
The Chianti Classico 2000 project showed that if it was planted at the right time, cover crop could stress vines and advance their ripening. Cover crops such as legumes, called sovescio (“green manure” in English), are grown to increase soil vigor. Barley is grown to foster humus, stable organic matter, for vine growth. Other grains tend to reduce soil vigor. Native grasses secure the soil against erosion and provide a biodiverse ecosystem for microflora and microfauna. Viticulturalists rotate cover crops between the rows so as to control their fertility and capacity for drainage. The winegrowers at Monte Bernardi, Montemaggio, Poggerino, Querciabella, San Giusto a Rentennano, and Vignamaggio, among others, have developed cover crop strategies that are integral to their sustainable or organic farming practices and sensitive to their vineyard sites and soils. Marinai prefers coplanting, growing wheat between the vine rows. Olive trees are scattered here and there in his vineyards as well. He makes not only excellent wine but also organic pasta from a particular strain of wheat, Cappelli, that he raises. Planting cover crops reduces the use of heavy machines and, as a consequence, the compaction of soil. Looser soil provides a better habitat for insects, and the reduction of synthetic chemical treatments allows them to repopulate—particularly worms, which burrow into the soil, making it even less compact and breaking down nutritive elements, facilitating their uptake by rootlets.
In 1991, when De Marchi decided to reconstruct some terraces at Isole e Olena, several other wine producers derided him. Terraces were considered too expensive to build and to maintain. Those that De Marchi constructed with land-moving equipment were larger than the ones that generations of mezzadri had built in earlier centuries, and they turned out to be more expensive than he had imagined. He has not been able to determine if his terraces by themselves have improved his grapes and wines.
Socci believes that before the destruction of the terraces, the wines of Lamole were some of the most highly prized in Chianti. He reasoned that if he could restore the stone terraces that the vineyard renovations of the 1960s and 1970s had destroyed, Lamole’s visual patrimony and the fame of its wines would be restored. His project began in 2003. Five vineyards were terraced. The first vintages of their wines have become available. Time will tell whether Socci’s financially risky experiment will bring Lamole and his estate the desired returns. Other estates, such as I Fabbri at Casole, Il Tagliato at Ruffoli, and Le Regge and Villa Calcinaia at Greve, have also built and renovated terraces.
Current laws prohibit the destruction of terraces. Socci has installed ciglioni where the vineyard slope permits. They are used at San Giusto a Rentennano in Gaiole too. Valerio Barbieri’s rendition at Rocca delle Macìe is spectacular, with a drainage system skillfully integrated into the embanked terraces. Rocca delle Macìe’s resculpted vineyards are a monument to the work of Landeschi, Ridolfi, and Testaferrata.
After the departure of the mezzadri, native Tuscans were unwilling to do agricultural work. During the 1960s and 1970s, Sicilians and southern Italians helped to fill the gap. Later, non-Italian Europeans and Africans came to work.
Many had vine-tending expertise, though many others did not. The excessive pruning cuts made in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s by untrained and poorly managed workers may have helped to establish the incurable vine-wood disease known as mal dell’esca. Today, many agricultural workers have organized themselves in cooperatives. Enological consultants make it their business to select the best teams of vineyard workers for their client estates. Valerio Marconi, the enologist at Cinciano, related his experience: “I wanted local Italian people to harvest the grapes, but they all had excuses not to work. It is a shame. I tried it for two years, and then I gave up. They had excuses. But the grapes don’t. So last harvest I used temporary workers from Albania and Greece.” Foreigners of one kind own much of Chianti. Foreigners of another do the work.
The presence of mal dell’esca, an incurable disease caused by a complex fungus population that enters the vine’s trunk, and the increasing interest in hands-on viticulture as a factor in the quality of wine have led to a revision of the way that vines are pruned. From 1995 to 2010, low cordon-spur pruning was the status quo. It remains popular, but now many producers are moving back to cane pruning. Cordon pruning involves training one or two permanent lateral extensions in line with the row from each trunk. This system helps to regularize the canopy, yield, and fruit quality along these cordons. Each spur, a small branch off a lateral trunk, usually carries two buds. The number of spurs varies with soil and plant vigor and the desired yield. Pruning can be done mechanically. One problem with cordon-spur is that as the spurs get longer, they force the grower to cut them back dramatically at a certain point, leaving large wounds in the cordon. Because these cuts are in older wood, where sap circulation is slower and more limited, mal dell’esca can easily enter the vine through them. Vines are especially vulnerable during the dormant winter period, when they have no sap to thwart a fungus attack.
Vines trained in Guyot or Tuscan arched cane (capovolto) resist mal dell’esca better than those in cordon-spur (cordone speronato). Guyot involves one or two canes tied flat along the trellis’s bottom wire. Tuscan arched cane has a similar configuration, but the one or two canes are arched, as the name says. The canes are bent over a higher wire, and the end of each is tied to the lower wire. With Guyot, because there is more vigor near the trunk and at the tip of the cane than in the center of the cane, the bunch maturity varies along the fruiting cane. Arching the cane redistributes the vigor of the plant, adding more to the center of the cane and reducing it at the cane’s tip and base. Guyot can easily be mechanically harvested, but Tuscan arched cane cannot, because its bunches are at different heights. Hence, Tuscan arched cane entails more handwork than Guyot. In both systems, selecting the right canes from the former season to use for the current season’s fruiting requires experience. The fruiting canes have to be renewed each year. The pruning cuts are small and are made in young wood. In both Guyot and capovolto, the sap flows more vigorously through the canes with cuts. Hence, these vines are more resistant to mal dell’esca. The cuts are also fewer and smaller than in cordon pruning, thus reducing the points where mal dell’esca can enter the trunk. Cane systems usually yield more than cordon ones, but their output can be regulated by using a shorter fruiting cane with fewer buds. Green-harvesting techniques, such as picking and discarding bunches before they ripen, can also reduce yields. For high-quality grapes, the one cane of a vine in single Guyot is left with six to eight buds. Given that wine alcohol levels tend to be excessive nowadays, some producers welcome higher yields and the fact that, particularly with Guyot, some fruit will be less ripe along the cane, with some bunches having a lot of sugar and skin development and other bunches having less sugar and more acidity. In addition, because Sangiovese buds early, early spring frost can destroy those buds (and their future crop). In cane pruning systems, the canes can be left in their upward growing positions, away from the soil, where frost first occurs. Later in the spring, they can be tied down closer to the earth, to take advantage of radiant heat rising from the sun-warmed soil.
Alberello (“little bush”) is a system that is very low to the ground. Its round bush configuration makes it difficult to use machines without damaging the branches. Hence, workers must tend it by hand, hunching over the vine. It is backbreaking work. This system helps advance ripening, because the leaves can absorb heat from all directions, including from the ground, allowing for greater photosynthesis. Because the bunches are close to and equidistant from the roots, they are triggered more quickly and more evenly by rising sap, which carries nutritive elements, water, and hormones that regulate growth. These factors so increase vigor that the grapes can mature several days earlier than those in a cordon or cane system pruned to the same number of buds. Alberello gives a regular and low production of small, compact bunches. It is particularly good for dry growing environments where the soil is rocky and fast draining but there is water deep underneath. The low-lying foliage can also absorb moisture rising from the subsoil. Each vine usually supports two to four cordons, which grow up from a central trunk. Each cordon carries two spurs, each with two buds. Hence, this is an in-the-round, cordon-spur training system. Alberello is trained higher in Chianti than in southern Italy, perhaps because the hills of Chianti and Sangiovese are more subject to spring frost. Since the shoots rise higher, they need the support of a stake. In southern Italy, where the vines are trained lower, stakes are not used. The alberello system in Chianti resembles the staked-gobelet system practiced on the Hermitage hill in France’s Rhône valley.
Ilaria Anichini at Montemaggio in Radda has planted a small plot of alberello quincuncially. She has positioned it in a cool spot with a northerly exposure. She finds that alberello training advances ripening by seven to ten days compared with other systems. This enhances her chances of bringing in a ripe crop. The places to see classic alberello in Chianti are many sites in Lamole and Casole, Le Boncie in Castelnuovo Berardenga, Castello di Cacchiano in Gaiole, and Candialle in Panzano. Castello dei Rampolla in Panzano and Poggio al Sole in Tavarnelle use the candelabra (éventail) configuration so that the vegetation can be tied to row wires and the labor costs are lower.
Today vineyard management relies on more than a single-bullet solution such as clonal selection. There was a pair of vintages that sent a clear message to Chianti Classico producers: one of the coolest and wettest, 2002, followed by one of the most ferociously hottest and driest, 2003. During the 2002 vintage, producers tried to channel much of the energy of the vine away from canopy development and toward fruit maturation. One method was to reduce the canopy before the harvest, particularly to strip leaves from around the ripening bunches. For the 2003 season, producers had to put their 2002 strategy into reverse, leaving vegetation on the flank of the vine most exposed to the sun and removing leaves and shoots on the shaded side. The stripping of leaves from around the ripening bunches had to be delayed until just before the harvest, to keep the bunches in the shade.
Typically, growth at the top of the vine is trimmed off in June in a process called cimatura, or “topping.” This results in the lateral growth of secondary shoots, reducing airflow around the fruit and necessitating their removal. Michael Schmelzer of Monte Bernardi introduced a new technique into Chianti Classico: twirling shoot growth into braids. He rolls the tender green shoots around the top wire or wires of the trellis. The Italian for “to braid” is intrecciare, and this operation is called intrecciatura. It preserves apical dominance, allowing the vine to express its growth. This leads to higher yields, better tannin ripeness in the ripened fruit, and earlier ripening by one or two weeks. Moreover, Schmelzer reports that the resulting wines have lower alcohol and higher polyphenolic compound measurements, expressed as more color and structure. Piero Lanza at Poggerino also practices intrecciatura.
During the 1990s, Querciabella in Ruffoli was an early adopter of organic and biodynamic agriculture. Sebastiano Castiglioni was the force behind this change. He brought in Leonello Anello, one of Italy’s first biodynamic consultants, who is now helping the estate to become 100 percent vegan (i.e., abstaining from the use of products derived from animals, such as manure).
Another pioneer in bringing biodynamic viticulture to Chianti Classico is Luca di Napoli. In 1994 he introduced this philosophy and practice to Castello dei Rampolla. There are also less visible champions of the organic and biodynamic movements in Chianti Classico, such as Morganti of Le Boncie, but the pursuit of “off-road” viticultural strategies has been rare in the region.
That is now changing. It began with Panzano. The agronomist Ruggero Mazzilli, in conjunction with Panzano’s union of winegrowers, the Unione Viticoltori di Panzano in Chianti (UVP), is showing that almost an entire district of winegrowers can work together to become organic. This group was born in 1992, when a cadre of young winemakers joined together to form a lobby. Because they had similar volumes of production and were all interested in producing top-quality wines, they easily found common cause. In 2005 a leafhopper, Scaphoideus titanus, that is a vector of the incurable and deadly vine disease flavescence dorée was discovered in the township of Greve. A ministerial decree of five years earlier obliged the spraying of insecticides in all townships where the vector was present. Treating their vineyards in this manner would have compromised the organic principles of the UVP. Mazzilli, a consultant who specializes in organic viticulture, happened to be in Greve in 2005. The UVP consulted him about the situation. Together with professors from the Universities of Pisa and Florence and the UVP, he set up a program to monitor the insect’s presence in all the vineyards of Panzano and obtained a derogation from the government. The condition for this exception was that if the leafhopper was discovered, insecticides would have to be used. Mazzilli and his wife, Amelia Perego, set up the consulting company SPEVIS (Stazione Sperimentale per la Viticoltura Sostenibile, “Experimental research station for sustainable viticulture”), which operates a monitoring and research vineyard in coordination with the UVP and informs the government of any sightings of Scaphoideus titanus. As of early 2016, the government has not forced Panzano winegrowers to spray insecticides. Organically farmed vineyards dominate the Panzano landscape. Mazzilli also helps farmers there (at no cost to them) to become organic. When they achieve that goal, they can hire him as their consulting organic agronomist. He also has clients elsewhere in Tuscany and in many other regions of Italy. Mazzilli argues that to be effective from a biological perspective and competitive with conventional farming from a cost perspective, organic practice must involve large areas rather than isolated plots. In 2016 he reported that about 93 percent of Panzano’s six hundred hectares (1,483 acres) are organic. Zonin’s Castello di Albola in Radda is also consulting him, showing that the sustainable and organic movement is beginning to penetrate the larger estates in Chianti Classico.
Mazzilli’s idea is that producers have to unite and act in concert to protect their vineyards from disease and insect infestations. They must recycle “waste” such as spent vegetation so that they can intensify, rather than dilute, their terroir. What Mazzilli and the winegrowers of Panzano have done has inspired all of Chianti Classico. Thankfully, Chianti is a natural environment that is much less intensively farmed than other famous viticultural areas. Chianti Classico vineyards occupy a small fraction of its surface area. Woods dominate the landscape, cleaning the air, filtering the water, and housing a diversity of flora and fauna. If producers unite to protect their environment, they can secure that aspect of Chianti Classico’s future—and magnify the potential of their wines to express its terroir.