TOURIST HARVEST 2024 WITH TASTINGS, EXPERIENCES AND DINNERS
FROM SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 15th TO WEDNESDAY 18th OR FROM MONDAY 23rd TO THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 26th IN TUSCANY WITH A VERY INTENSIVE PROGRAM TO LEARN AND HAVE FUN...
FROM SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 15th TO WEDNESDAY 18th OR FROM MONDAY 23rd TO THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 26th IN TUSCANY WITH A VERY INTENSIVE PROGRAM TO LEARN AND HAVE FUN...
LANDSCAPES, SPORTS, MONUMENTS AND CITIES OF ART, TYPICAL GASTRONOMY AND OF COURSE WINERIES WITH THE HOPE OF PARTICIPATING IN EXPERIENCES DIFFERENT FROM ALL THOSE HAD BEFORE
Wine Tourism- Listening to the vineyards- Fattoria del Colle
We have always known that wine is not enough to generate wine tourism flows. We need a suggestive landscape, typical gastronomy and the presence of people with whom we can establish a relationship. More recently, with the exponential increase in tourist wineries (25,000), the most critical element is the proposal of experiences that are too similar to each other. In 96% of wineries, visitors visit the vat room and barrel room with an explanation of the production process followed by a tasting. It is only the size and importance of the latter that varies. This is why Roberta Garibaldi tells us that 66% of visitors think that the experiences in the cellar are all similar and there is a real risk that they will get bored.
But offering different experiences capable of teaching while having fun is possible, Donatella Cinelli Colombini shows us how.
Identity, authenticity and diversity are the three key words. Donatella Cinelli Colombini invites you to her wineries at Casato Prime Donne in Montalcino and Fattoria del Colle in the Orcia DOC region to participate in unique and memorable experiences designed for different visitor targets.
Two flagship organic wines from the Donatella Cinelli Colombini’s wineries directly to your home. 3 bottles of Brunello Prime Donne 2019 and 3 bottles of Cenerentola Orcia Doc 2019 for €227.00....
Great 5-star vintage, the first of a lucky sequence of 4 consecutive good harvests.Cenerentola was born in the Bio- organic vineyards at Fattoria del Colle...
To rest, get a tan but also to discover masterpieces of art, play sports in the midst of breathtaking views, see where Brunello and extra virgin olive oil are born...
It’s a game but up to a certain point: the vine, the vineyard, the grape, the rooted vine are feminine nouns in Italian but the word vino (wine) is male like most of the appellations
by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
Vigneto Glera-per-il-Prosecco
Today 55% of regular Italian wine consumers are women. The fairer sex is the majority among those who book visits to wineries …. but wine has a masculine connotation because, for 8,000 years it has been produced and drunk by men.
Daniele Cernilli- Doctor Wine with the cultured irony that distinguishes him starts from this point for a semi-serious but very intriguing reasoning << Grammar sometimes plays bad jokes. We are used to thinking of wine as something masculine, “the” Barolo, “the” Brunello, “the” Taurasi, but there are vines and wines declined in the feminine and who knows this might also coincide with their characteristics … >>
The “gender” examination of the appellations, for me, starts from the decidedly female Doc Orcia because << the most beautiful wine in the world >> is born on hills with sinuous profiles. These are the sexiest and most similar views to a woman’s body that Tuscany and perhaps Italy possesses.
Donatella Cinelli Colombini, once again innovator, offers “tailor-made” wine experiences to satisfy the different types of wine tourists post-covid
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Donatella Cinelli Colombini, who invented the Cantine Aperte event and teaches wine hospitality in master courses, also knows that wine tourists are a small army made up of people with different profiles and expectations: there are those who are just intrigued, true enthusiasts and Brunello lovers , there are the insatiable eager for extraordinary exclusivity, but there is also those who want to spend their free time learning in a playful way. Wine tourists have changed compared to 2019, when no one knew about Covid, and above all they now want different things. Today, those who arrive in the wine territories are hunting foe emotions and want to immerse themselves in a pesticide-free countryside, cultivated by those who are passionate, traditionalists but also willing to share.
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<< To this diversified multitude the vast majority of Italian wineries offer only one type of experience: visit between vats and barrels with an explanation of the production processes and tasting >> says Donatella << This is wrong>>.
Here Cinelli Colombini moves from theory to practice and instead of just writing manuals on wine tourism, has decided to lead by example by designing 8 experiences for visitors in her wineries Casato Prime Donne in Brunello and Fattoria del Colle, in Chianti and in the Doc Orcia. Many of the tastings are accompanied by small samples of pecorino, extra virgin olive oil from the farm and unsalted Tuscan bread, therefore without salt.
4 proposals for those who arrive in Montalcino driven by different curiosities: some know little or nothing about wine and know Brunello almost only by hearsay. In this case, there is a simpler experience at a lower price. Then there are two proposals for wine lovers always looking for new emotions and new knowledge about Brunello: the first more focused on tasting – from the barrel to the great vintages – the second more unusual was studied by the Sommelier musician Igor Vazzaz, an itinerant tasting associated with music. Finally, there is something truly unique where Donatella has decided to personally participate. It includes the tasting of her most exclusive limited-edition Brunello, accompanied by cheeses that have won international awards.
Leone Rosso 2019 Doc Orcia 5 stars with Sangiovese and Merlot in a small and exclusive production born in the vineyards, vinified and aged at Fattoria del Colle
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Leone Rosso Doc Orcia wine is dedicated Donatella Cinelli Colombini’s ancestors who built Fattoria del Colle in 1592 and had a rampant lion in their coat of arms. The grapes for the Leone Rosso Doc Orcia are born right in the vineyards of the farm.
This is the Socini or Sozzini family composed of jurists and philosophers. Two of them – Lelio (1525-1562) and Fausto (1539-1604) – went down in history for having played an important role among the European free thinkers who gave birth to Protestantism.
It was precisely their opposition to the Church that led the family to ruin and the Colle farm to be confiscated. The property was bought back by Donatella’s great-grandfather, the engineer Livio Socini around 1919 who almost by chance, gained it from a bankruptcy. When he visited it he realized that in the chapel and in the villa there were his identical coats of arms and understood that fate had put back in his hands, after 400 years, the farm founded by his ancestor Claudio Socini.
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A mysterious thread with the past that Donatella Cinelli Colombini also felt when her father Fausto gave her the Fattoria del Colle in 1998.
2019 is a memorable harvest. Classified 5 stars for the perfect quality of the grapes: small bunches small, ripe and healthy berries. An impressive amount of noble substances that, from the skins of the grapes, went into the must colouring it in a few hours and which were then extracted through a longer maceration than usual.
The Orcia denomination was born on February 14, 2000 in the hills that are located in the middle of the Brunello and Vino Nobile territories. A beautiful area of southern Tuscany, inscribed since 2004, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site thanks to the agricultural landscape preserved over the centuries.
This is why the Doc Orcia is defined as “the most beautiful wine in the world”.
It is also the proximity to two great DOCG wine – Nobile and Brunello – that has pushed Orcia producers to grow qualitatively very quickly and create a distinctive identity towards the millions of tourists and hikers, especially foreigners, who arrive in the area attracted by the beauty of the places and the goodness of the wines.
The Doc Orcia Cenerentola 2017 has just received 92/100 from the Wine Spectator confirming a quality that remains very high every year
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It is always difficult to go over the 90/100 mark in the international press when the wine is from an emerging denomination. But it is even more difficult to get the wine tasted often and that it maintains, year after year, very high scores.
Cenerentola Doc Orcia has succeeded.
From the 2010 harvest to today it has obtained stellar scores from Wine Spectator: vintage 2010 91/100, vintage 2013 90/100, vintage 2016 93/100, and vintage 2017 92/100.
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To this are added very positive ratings from Robert Parker-Wine Advocate, James Suckling, and Wine Enthusiast for a total of 10 reviews above 90 points in the last 5 vintages produced.
An amazing prize list for a wine of a denomination born in 2000 and still very small in size, such as the Doc Orcia, on which to attract the attention of critics is very difficult. It is an amazing result especially because the blend is brand new and combines Sangiovese with a minor native vine – the Foglia Tonda – resurrected from oblivion that was a century long.
The blend is different from the two grapes tasted in purity: making a comparison with fashion, the elegant and vertical prince grape of Tuscany makes you think of an Armani dress, while the Foglia Tonda, powerful and exuberant, recalls Cavalli or Dolce and Gabbana.
We cannot wait to show you the new cellar with the Spumante area, the small renovations, the vegetable garden and to be able to give you a taste of the new vintages and our new recipes
Wine destination Fattoria del Colle – Hiking through the vineyards – Tuscany
by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
We have been shut to the public but we have never been still. Those who have been following us via social media have seen the awards arriving from all over the world for our wines, the birth of the photography safari and the new signposting the experimentation of dishes by our chef Doriana, the Spumante bottles on the pupitre, the spontaneous Val d’Orcia herb plantation in the vegetable garden ….
Many small things are changing Fattoria del Colle into a wine destination able to offer authentic and absorbing experiences with wines and with the old Tuscan traditions.
Wine destination Fattoria del Colle – Wine Cellar
Obviously the biggest changes are in the cellar at Fattoria del Colle. The fermentation area has now been boxed off and has a shelter that will protect the grapes in arrival during the harvest. Where the packaging takes place there is already positioned a new bottling machine and soon the new labelling machine will arrive so as to guarantee the maximum care even in the last but all the same important moment in wine production. There is an immersive room where visitors will be able to hear and see what happens in the vineyards during the 4 seasons and at different times of day. So as to learn that light can change the landscape, and the cicadas are not always heard, on the contrary in summer and winter they have their noises, and the northerly wind has a different sound than the sirocco wind, while the bells are still timekeepers in countryside. An immersive experience where sounds, images and lights teach guests that the wonderful countryside surrounding them must be looked at with an attentive eye, and in a few months it will be completely different.
The new underground bottle storage of around 450 sq m (18°C) contains the coolest room (12°C), where the spumante rests on the yeast after the secondary fermentation. This is a craft production of just 1800 bottles per year of spumante metodo classico obtained from Sangiovese grapes. The remuage of the bottles on the pupitre is also done by hand.
The most spectacular thing is the external overlay of the new section of the cellar representing a wood in corten steel designed by the Architect Elisa Boldi to resemble the oak trees in the winter period. At night the metal trees are backlit and give the sensation of a fairytale scenario. Naturally the most precious things, even if less spectacular, are the bottles inside. They are receiving prize after prize from all over the world. The latest are from GuidaBIO that has given the excellence with 5 leaves to the Chianti Superiore 2018 and 4 leaves to the Leone Rosso Doc Orcia and to Rosso di Montalcino Doc 2018.
The Doc Orcia wine region was born on February 14th 2000, Valentine’s Day, and Cenerentola is the right wine to celebrate it by saying: I love you; do you want to be my princess?
Orcia Doc, birthday for Valentine’s Day, Cenerentola wine
by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
Doc Orcia, the denomination born under the sign of love, on February 14th, 21 years ago. An act of love towards a territory chosen by Unesco as a world heritage site for its rural landscapes formed by mankind during the centuries. It is Still surviving today maintained intact like a masterpiece in harmony between nature, history and men.
An image of beauty that Orcia – the most beautiful wine in the world – transforms into a liquid postcard to be enjoyed. A territory made up of high hills between the production areas of the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino. In the past this region was hit often by spring frosts. Only with the recent worldwide climatic changes the Orcia grape growers have had continuity in grape production and have summed up the courage to compete with the two stronger wine regions close by, two older, more famous and stronger sisters.
The Tree of Gold, in Lucignano, tree of love, where lovers can promise eternal love on Valentine’s Day
A story similar to that of Cinderella and that is the reason her name was given to the Orcia Doc wine produced at Fattoria del Colle by Donatella Cinelli Colombini. The finale is the same too: the Cenerentola wine has now surpassed the magical line of the 90/100 ratings by great international by critics (for the vintage 2016, it received 93 from Wine Spectator, 91 from Wine Advocate/Robert Parker, and 93 from James Suckling) and now has a small crown on the label like a true princess. The production is still limited, only 10.000 bottles per year, but the number of fans is rapidly increasing all over the world, and among them there are some real princes.
The story of this wine tells of those who start off at a disadvantage but in the end succeed. It is the story of a real challenge because Cenerentola has the harmonious vigour of the best Supertuscans but is made with only autochthonous Tuscan grapes – Sangiovese and Foglia Tonda – the latter of which had been abandoned and has found new prospective of survival thanks to this wine.
A love story with a happy ending that transforms the Doc Orcia Cenerentola into an authentic symbol of romance. A wine that says to the loved one <<will you become my princess>> and transforms every man in love into a Prince Charming.
Polenta or “pulenda”, as we say in Montalcino, to keep warm in the winter a dish that brings joy and can accompany Cenerentola because both stay by the fireplace
Ingredients for Polenta or Pulenda with mushrooms – Fattoria del Colle
by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
I adore hunting for mushrooms and in the woods around Fattoria del Colle it is easy to find them. It is very difficult for me to come home empty handed and there is no need for physical exertion either. Few porcini but many pinaroli, lecciaioli, bigine, cappelle del prete, paonazzi, ordinali, but no ovuli. I also enjoy cleaning them, when I have time. I do not eat many but I am very proud to offer them to friends especially with Pappardelle or polenta.
Polenta or “pulenda” as we say in Montalcino, is the food for when it is cold and when the North wind blows or when it snows. To cut it with a bit of thread is already a feast, if then you add a glass of Cenerentola Doc Orcia, the fairytale with the lit fireplace with the copper pot … hoping that the Prince Charming will arrive.
For 4 people
Polenta or Pulenda with mushrooms: preparing it at Fattoria del Colle
Easy, takes about an hour
500 g of corn flour – large grain, 15 g of extra virgin olive oil, a spoonful of coarse salt and 2 lt of water.
For the dressing: two garlic cloves, extra virgin olive oil, 500 g of mixed mushrooms (fresh or frozen), 500 g of pureed tomato, salt, grated Parmigiano.
Put the water in a pot, add the salt and bring to the boil. Add the oil and then the corn flour keep whipping until it comes to the boil again. Lower the flame and continue cooking while stirring for 50 minutes. You need patience and strength, and the job finishes in turning up the flame for a couple of minutes so that the polenta comes away from the rim of the pot. Pour it onto a wooden board and cut with a cotton thread then serve and eat still hot.
12 bottiglie a casa vostra; le primissime bottiglie di Cenerentola DOC Orcia 2017 e le ultimissime di 2016. Vino per grandi occasioni e momenti romantici. Lampada di Cenerentola per la cantine dei Wine lovers ...
2017: the most Mediterranean harvest ever in Tuscany that has produced very sensual wines that are warm, powerful and able to give their best in youth, Cenerentola Doc Orcia is one of these.
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This wine comes from the maddest vintage since the beginning of the century: at the end of April there was a spring frost that hit the whole of Europe. Our hills remained miraculously unharmed while in Spain or Sicily the young buds on the vines were burned.
But another danger was in stall: after a winter with few showers an African summer began, that at the beginning of August made the thermometers rise to 40°C. Bushes, hedges, streams without water and hoards of thirsty wild boar that ate the grapes still unripe to quench their thirst.
Those, who like us, practice an organic regime in agriculture, have had less problems of hydro stress in the vineyards because the vines, solicited to react spontaneously to the climate, have maintained an equilibrium abandoning part of the clusters that remained green and were later removed.
At the end the 2017 harvest has been the scarcest ever.
While the Sangiovese, main Tuscan variety, has suffered thirst and heat, the Foglia Tonda a local rare variety, carried out one of its best performances.
However there is a reason for this funny name, it is the similarity between the Cinderella fairytale and the Orcia Doc wine region. This appellation was born in 2000 among the high hills between the Brunello di Montalcino and Nobile di Montalcino wine regions. It would seem an adverse situation with two stepsisters who are older and more famous and who get invited to royal banquets, while the young Orcia DOC gets ignored. But this situation is one that also incites to combactivity and creativity.
So , in conclusion, with a lot of courage and a pinch of magic the Doc Orcia region challenges the sisters.
For the last two weekends in September and the first two of October at Fattoria del Colle a Brunello, Chianti and Orcia experience
Grape Harvest experience – Fattoria del Colle – Tuscany
From Friday evening until Sunday to see how fine red wines from Tuscany are born, touching the vines, the grape clusters, and seeing the various phases of the vinification but mostly tasting must, wines, and Reserves … so as to understand the evolution of Bacchus’s nectar with the help of great experts. Three journalists will tell the history of Tuscan wine and the specificities in the production of Tuscan wines and of Sangiovese. A chance not to be missed for wine lovers, where they can stay in peace in the vast spaces of the countryside and in the healthy ambiance of the BIO (organic) vineyards.
Grape harvest experience – Fattoria del Colle – Tuscany
18-20, 25-27 September, 2-4, 9-11 October with a program that includes visits, wine tastings, direct experiences and an in -sight lesson with a super expert.
The frame for these weekends full of experiences and emotions is Fattoria del Colle, 2 and a half hours from Rome and Bologna, one hour from Florence and Perugia.
18 km from the A1 exit Valdichiana-Bettolle.
Fattoria del Colle is a small rural hamlet from the end of the 16th century. There is a villa, a chapel and the old farmers’ houses that have now become lodgings for guests, furnished with antiques and with modern comfort.
The 2020 full-experience harvest weekend program includes participation to different phases of the grape picking and the vinification with a tasting of the new must, plus the guided tour of the vineyards with a tasting of the grapes. The tour of the wineries in Montalcino (Casato Prime Donne) and in Chianti-Doc Orcia with a Vertical tasting of Brunello and Orcia, an in-sight lesson regarding Sangiovese and the wines from Tuscany with an experience called “winemaker for a day” where each participant produces their own Supertuscan.
For information and bookings please click on the link cinellicolombini.it or call the nember: +39 0577 662108.