Fontaleoni
San Gimignano (Siena), Tuscany
Wines:
Vernaccia 09
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
Casanuova 08
Chianti Colli Senesi 08
Chianti Tramonto 08
Chianti Colli Senesi Sciroc Riserva 05
Website:
Pronunciation:
FOHN-tah-leh-OH-nee
Vernaccia di San Gimignano is the only Tuscan white wine with an historical identity and, at its best, with a wonderful and lively personality. Its reputation dating back to the Middle Ages, the wine’s ebullience was duly noted by Michelangelo who with a perceptive poetical flight described it as a wine that “kisses, bites, stings and caresses”, perfectly capturing its delicate yet sinewy character.
Fontaleoni’s vineyards lie on a prevalently tufaceous soil at the ideal altitude of 200 meters above sea level. The yields are kept scrupulously low, particularly in the Casanuova vineyard, from whose grapes comes the estate’s outstanding single-vineyard Vernaccia. To be perfectly honest, Vernaccia is still a rather mysterious varietal whose clonal identity is far from being understood. Fontaleoni has been able to distinguish six different ones and there are probably others. Selection massale is being performed at Fontaleoni, empirically rather than scientifically, as clearly better clones are not difficult to spot. A characteristic, however, common to all Vernaccia grapes is their delicate nature and very, very fragile skins that break easily when reaching full ripeness. Thus, the importance of both harvest care and cellar equipment such as piston pumps and soft presses to guard the integrity of the grapes and their delicate aromatics.
Fontaleoni’s care in the vineyard and cellar competence, supervised by winemaker Paolo Caciogna, turned the estate’s first bottling of the 1994 vintage into a sensation, the single vineyard winning first place and the regular Vernaccia second in the Vernaccia Consortium’s blind tasting of all 1994s produced!
Another Vernaccia,“Notte di Luna,” a Chianti DOCG and two versions of Chianti Colli Senesi are also made.
