Salcheto
Words of Michele Manelli
They [in Montalcino] are spoiled. They are very spoiled. There are people that have done a great job out there. In the nineties, it was a great moment. I’d even include the eighties. That’s where the success would be. At that time, we [in Vino Nobile di Montepulciano] didn’t have enough good people to create the story. That’s it. It’s simple.
Montepulciano was, in the 1500s, the wine school of Italy. If you consider from Piedmont to Sicily, you could find documents from that time that mentioned Montepulciano as a guideline for quality.
In the 1500s! We were exporting wine to all the parts of Europe. Abruzzo [a separate Italian region to Tuscany, on Italy’s eastern seaboard] started making wine in the 1700s to develop from the Apennines down to the coast and dedicated [or re-named] the name of its [main red] wine [grape, by calling it “Montepulciano”] in an attempt of quality to Montepulciano, Montepulciano di’ Abruzzo. That was a real connection with Montepulciano, dedicated to quality. [Reminder to readers: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is a red wine from Tuscany in west-central Italy made mainly with the Sangiovese grape which is grown around the hilltop Tuscan town of Montepulciano. The red wine called “Montepulciano d’Abruzzo” is made from a totally different grape called Montepulciano and comes from the Abruzzo region which lies along Italy’s East-Central Italy coastline. Phew!]
BUY THE WINE
Montenidoli Tradizionale Vernaccia Di San Gimignano 2022
Following local tradition, the must macerates long on the skins, and is pressed just before the fermentation begins, to capture the character and the flavors of the land.
Pale yellow, tending towards gold, with hay and almonds on the nose, and rich on the palate, with a firm dry finish.
$37.99
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About
Named after a stream which lives at the foot of the town of Montepulciano, Salcheto is a biodynamic winery that was converted from a classic farm sharecrop to a winery in the mid-1990s. You could call Salcheto both extremely interventionist and extremely non-interventionist at the same time. The wine is made by using native yeasts in its fermentations and produced without the addition of sulfites. What is unique about Salcheto is the way they are utilizing an innovative technology to allow them to produce wine without additional inputs. The innovative technology is a fermenter which recycles the naturally produced CO2 during the fermentation process in a way that allows for “soft” low stress, zero input winemaking (it’s complicated – read below for the full explanation!).
The winery itself is very focused on maintaining a minimal carbon footprint and they claim to be the first company in the world to have certified the carbon footprint of a bottle of wine. They are also focused on reducing their water footprint. Through the use of biodynamic practices Salcheto has also developed a “Biodiversity Index.”