WHICH WHITE VARIETY SHOULD BE PLANTED AT FATTORIA DEL COLLE?

WHICH WHITE VARIETY SHOULD BE PLANTED AT FATTORIA DEL COLLE?

 

TASTING OF 16 NATIVE TUSCAN WHITE WINES AND A LABORATORY OF IDEAS FOR CHOOSING THE VARIETIES TO PLANT. ROBERTO BELLINI NEXT TO DONATELLA CINELLI COLOMBINI’S STAFF

Donatella Cinelli Colombini is in serious difficulty choosing the white grape variety to plant and proceeds by trial and error. Like many Tuscan producers, she wants to have vineyards able to produce high-profile white wines capable of establishing themselves on the market. Everyone is aware that, in our region, there are areas suited to the production of great white wines which must be identified and characterized with the use of the most suitable grape variety.

TUSCAN PRODUCERS IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT WHITE

But everyone goes on their own.

And in this way, it will take decades to understand the right path.

There is no connection between the ongoing experiments that allows us to identify excellence, above all there is no study on the different types of Tuscan Trebbiano or other native white grape varieties that identifies those with greater potential.

One wonders why the two Universities of Agriculture and Oenology in Tuscany have not begun. This would speed up the identification of the best clones and the best areas, perhaps with a view to the creation of a new denomination.

While Tuscany is still stuck on white wines, the other major wine regions have already moved forward. Piedmont has relaunched itself with Alta Langa and Derthona, Lombardy has Franciacorta and Lugana, not to mention Veneto with the Prosecco phenomenon. Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino have always had a prevalence of high-end white wines.

TUSCANY NEEDS A PROJECT ON WHITE WINES

And Tuscany, where Sangiovese covers over 60% of the vineyard area, doesn’t yet have a project for whites?

Yet, the turning point is very clear: ten years ago, white wines were 47% of the entire world production and now they are 49%. Consumption has also changed, in Italy 59% of the wine drunk is white.

While market demand changes colour and the vineyards cultivated in Glera grow by 223% (2005 to 2021), Trebbiano Toscano, the fifth most cultivated grape variety in Italy, loses 30% of its cultivated area. Added to this is another worrying element, the main Tuscan white denomination, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, is going through a commercial ordeal and, in 2023, had lost a third of its turnover compared to ten years earlier. 2024 is affected by the very poor recent harvest and therefore does not help. Only Vermentino has a good sales trend within the Maremma DOC.

With such a scenario, the demand for serious commitment on the part of universities and research centres becomes very very important.

WHICH WHITE VARIETY SHOULD BE PLANTED AT FATTORIA DEL COLLE?

Meanwhile we, like everyone else, continue with an eighteenth-century experimental technique. We know that the land at Fattoria del Colle has excellent potential. Four years ago, Lydia and Claude Bourguignon, very famous French agronomists, also told us so. We have already chosen the first two allotments in which to plant the new vineyards and now we need to identify the grape variety.

For this purpose we organized a tasting of 16 Tuscan whites obtained from native varieties. The best performing bottles from a qualitative and commercial point of view were chosen.

TASTING AND IDEA LABORATORY TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT VARIETY FATTORIA DEL COLLE

2 Ansonica, 3 Vermentino, 3 Vernaccia of which one a blend, 2 Trebbiano Toscano and a Trebbiano from Spoleto, 3 Grechetto including one from Todi and a macerate, a blend of Trebbiano, Malvasia and Pulcinculo, a secret wine chosen by the senior oenologist Barbara Magnani and obviously our white Sanchimento IGT Toscana.

The strictly blindfolded tasting involved all of Donatella Cinelli Colombini’s staff working on the wine, with the exception of the restaurant which was busy collecting a prize awarded to our chef Doriana Marchi. There were the agronomist Gabriele Gadenz and the two head grape growers, 4 oenologists including the consultant Valerie Lavigne, the 2 tourist reception staff, the 3 sales staff and our press officer Marzia Morganti. Reinforcing this group was Roberto Bellini Sommelier Ais responsible for the VITAE guide and therefore fresh from tasting the entire Tuscan wine production.

What was done was obviously a very home-made empirical method, more similar to a laboratory of ideas than to a scientific study but we are certain that, thanks to the tasting ability of the participants and their knowledge of the soils of the Fattoria del Colle, the indications were the right ones. And now we are delving into Trebbiano to identify clones and types with greater potential.