BRUNELLO di MONTALCINO Brunello di Montalcino DOCG, flagskibet indenfor toscansk vin, er produceret på en sort af Sangiovese-druen, der hedder Sangiovese grosso (lokalnavnet på druesorten er Brunello). Druen er lille og mørk, og giver nogle meget koncentrerede vine som kan gemmes i op til 100 år. Brunello di Montalcino fik DOCG-status i 1980, og det er en vin som skal gemmes i 3½ år på fad inden den aftappes på flaske. Til navnet hæfter sig en aura af luksus, historie, lang fadmodningstid og forfinet, stor, fyldig sangiovese-vin. Når brunello er bedst er det en utrolig intens og kompleks vin som kan sammenlignes med de allerstørste bourgogner.
MASTROJANNI Mastrojanni er en af de gamle etablerede vinhuse fra Brunello området med mange topplaceringer i blindsmagningskonkurrencer, topkarakteren 3 glas i Gambero Rosso........
Mastrojanni skriver selv en meget smuk præsentation, som jeg ikke synes bør skæmmes af en oversættelse til dansk. Læs på dette link eller nedenfor. Så vil du måske forstå, hvorfor vi er så stolte over, at de har valgt os til at repræsentere sig i Danmark. :-)
http://www.mastrojanni.com/azienda/Mastrojanni
An amazing story, for true fine red wine lovers.
Mastrojanni: a historic estate and its Brunello di Montalcino, its special terroir, its very special men.
Mastrojanni has been writing history with its wines since 1975, collecting awards from all over the world.
And in those years, only a few entered the wine-making adventure in Montalcino.
Today, thanks to an exceptional terroir and men who have believed in it for decades, Mastrojanni has become one of the most respected Montalcino producers as far as wine buffs are concerned.
1975, Roman lawyer, Gabriele Mastrojanni buys the San Pio and Loreto estates.
In the beginning poor land, sheep, woodland and untouched nature.
These lands have been poorly populated and poorly cultivated throughout the history of humanity: the land was therefore virgin, clean, without any form of pollution which man was then able to deface.
It was here in 1975 that lawyer, Gabriele Mastrojanni bought the San Pio and Loreto estates and decided to plant his first vineyards, of which part are still producing our wines today.
The valley of castles.
Over there, just a few kilometres away, climbing up the River Orcia and entering the now famous, Val d’Orcia, the terrain is not so steep and work with durum wheat is easy and yields well. Here, amongst these hills of between 180 and 440 metres above sea level there is nothing but sparse land. And if we find castles and country estates here, it is only because this was once the main road between the South of Italy and the centre used by Popes from the early centuries until the second millennium.
These buildings were once armed fortresses which had the sole task of protecting the highway. Those who lived here had been brought there, probably under force, to guarantee food for the soldiers.
This is why the architecture is almost all medieval and why the distance between one country estate or the castle and another is measured in kilometres.
This hamlet was created from a military tower which once controlled the Papal highway.
Steep and impassable hills have become the homeland of Sangiovese.
When Gabriele Mastrojanni arrived, he found virgin land, precisely because it had always been little or uncultivated and sparsely populated: I imagine he asked himself why.
The reply can be found in the poverty of this land: as it is steep, consisting of slopes that are often precipitous, of Holm oaks clinging to the lower hillside inclines, of the broom whose roots stall the landslides, it is very difficult to work and is leached, corroded, carried away by the torrential rains which often lash against it.
Land which is simply not suitable for man. It is suited to wolves and wild boar, to roe deer and fallow deer, to hares and buzzards, to badgers and owls or to the curlew which regularly sings there each night, to all the wild animals that have always populated the area and which have made these lands more of a hunting ground than a place to farm.
The origins of a work of art.
Gabriele Mastrojanni discovered this landscape, this territory.
And right from the very start he knew that a land as difficult as this would be generous when it came to quality, but extremely sparse as far as quantity was concerned: he was right.
Others, before him, beginning with that pioneering spirit who was the first Biondi-Santi and who invented the Brunello di Montalcino, had had the same experience, and the territory had been clear in its answer, that the best grape variety for these lands was the Sangiovese Grosso.
Mastrojanni, wanting to make a fine Brunello, planted just that, Sangiovese, choosing a planting pattern which allowed him to work comfortably with tractors whilst at the same time having a sufficiently high plant density: 5,700 plants per hectare.
The first delicious fruits.
Right from the very first vintages, the wine showed itself to be very interesting, with its wonderful and typical aroma of elderflower that every fine Sangiovese should express. And still today, all those lucky enough to cork a bottle from the eighties will be able to enjoy its finesse. So in a short time the estate built up its world famous reputation for excellent quality.
The wines were elegant, clean, highly scented and aged offering fantastic new aromas.
An export success.
Towards the beginning of the nineties, Antonio Mastrojanni, the lawyer’s son, began managing the estate himself and at the same time Maurizio Castelli, who is still our winemaker today, became the reference consultant of the winery. The Mastrojanni family, who lived in Rome and who only came to Montalcino occasionally, decided to place their trust in Andrea Machetti who offered to manage the estate’s evolution full-time. Andrea began in 1992 and his passionate work allowed Mastrojanni to grow both abroad and in its production, perhaps even beyond the lawyer’s initial dream.
Search for quality.
In those years a vinification cellar was built together with a wood ripening cellar.
Right from the start, it was decided that vinification would take place in cement, a method which was becoming obsolete at the time but which offered remarkable qualities both for its thermal stability and to the absence of magnetic fields which inevitably developed in the stainless steel tanks. The selection of the grapes was carried out on a number of occasions in the vine itself throwing to the ground the less ripe, or less attractive clusters or those which showed signs of over-ripening due to being exposed to too much sun or due to the tiredness of the plant. This type of careful and meticulous crop thinning is still carried out today towards the end of August. After that an initial harvesting takes place of the more prematurely ripe clusters for immediate vinification: this wine is the more acidic base that will be mixed with the second and last harvest of the fully ripened grapes.
The selection of the best grapes
Since 2008 all grape clusters undergo a further selection on a selection belt, where between six and eight people choose cluster by cluster eliminating those final defects which might have gone unnoticed during the harvest.
In this way the certainty of only making wine from healthy and perfectly ripe Sangiovese grapes is ensured and guaranteed: the absence of defects guarantees that the resulting wine is free from a whole series of negative organoleptic overtones which typically come from less than perfect grapes.
It is enough to think of a few mouldy grapes, or grapes which are over or under ripe to imagine the unpleasant odours or aggressive tannins which they could bring to a wine: these are rigorously eliminated and this is something that Mastrojanni has done since the earliest times.
The Illy era.
In 2008, a number of years after Mastrojanni the lawyer passed away, his children decided to sell the estate to the Illy family who were lucky enough to be able to purchase it. From that day, my brother Riccardo and I have intensified these controls, which were already very meticulous, introducing a selection table and a few Vosges oak vinification tanks, from centuries-old plants, to flank the historic cement tanks. The result of this is as follows – even though slight – improvements, we will see them over the next few years: the original Mastrojanni character is guaranteed and perhaps the wine will become even better, but it is too early to know that yet.
Sometimes, stories appear to have a red thread joining them together!
We purchased Mastrojanni because we had liked it for thirty years.
It was 1980 and I had just started drinking wine.I lived in Switzerland and every now and again I found a wine in the restaurants which I really liked and which didn’t cost the earth: Mastrojanni’s Brunello di Montalcino. By chance, in 1982, I visited a wine estate: it was the Mastrojanni estate.
In 1997, I bought my Podere Le Ripi and funny coincidence it bordered with the Mastrojanni estate.So I became a friend of my masters (and who knew how to make wine back then), Andrea Machetti, now Managing Director of Mastrojanni and his winemaker, Maurizio Castelli.
In this way I learnt to make wine, and when I understood that perhaps Mastrojanni would be put up for sale, I suggested that my brothers purchase it making it part of our holding company, Gruppo Illy S.p.A.
They too had been following this magnificent producer for years and respected the quality of the work carried out over thirty-five years by the Mastrojanni family.There was a kind of elective affinity between our way of working and that of this and we felt we were on the same wave length.
So in 2008 we made an offer and became “the ones continuing this adventure”.
Francesco Illy, Vigneron
Great stories of excellence are always made by special men.
Special men who create special company culture.
Of course the great lawyer Mastrojanni – who unfortunately I was never able to meet – must have been a man of clear vision and courage.
He came to Montalcino in 1975 and immediately decided to make a wine that would have made history. As he got older he found help in his children and the young Andrea Machetti who took the reins of the company in 1992 transforming it into one of the most highly respected producers in Montalcino.
Andrea is a man of few words and by now knows each of the estate’s vines perfectly. He knows how to grow them and make them feel good bringing ripe fruit year after year because he is there, always there, following every single detail, from a barrel which needs to be replaced or planed to a plant in need of help.
And he knows that this is the only way to make a fine wine: to be at its beck and call.
In those days, already a friend for a long time with Andrea, the poet and winemaker Maurizio Castelli arrived. A world famous winemaker for his fine wines, Maurizio is like Andrea and like the rest of us a “non-interventionist”: he tries to leave the wine to carry out its own evolution, dictated by its own nature.
But it is clear that a winemaker is like a doctor, and he has to know when there is a problem and how to cure it. His trick, like that of the best doctors, is “prevention”. Or rather working in a preventative fashion, through a careful and continuous presence in the winery and systematically controlling in order to protect the wine from any possible “colds” that might attack it.
In this way, thanks to the set up created by Andrea and Maurizio, Mastrojanni wines are free from those rather common interventions which make a wine more “constructed” than “natural”.
Philosophy:
When the earth is frugal, it is the philosophy not man.
Mastrojanni learnt this unusual gift of nature.
For any other crop, this terrain would be a real dose of bad luck.But the wine becomes good thanks to the very sparseness of the land: the less the vines find to feed themselves, the more they have to look for it. We have adapted ourselves to this imperative of nature knowing that it would give us resounding results and our philosophy comes from this: intervening as little as possible in the vineyard and in the cellar, being able to preserve – in the transformation phase – the wonder that nature has provided these grapes maintaining their aromas and structure intact.
It is a simple philosophy, almost Zen, which above all requires great humility and visceral respect for its master. Man is not used to acting as a disciple in front of nature, but it is the only way to make fine wines, because this – notwithstanding our long experience and all of our knowledge – each year teaches us something: only this opening to learning enables us to understand, learn and improve.
The results are confirmed by your appreciation.
It is the difficult nature of this terroir which has taught us how to make wine...
This is how a frugal terroir makes fine wine.
Of course I had understood this concept of “modest yield but high-quality” when wine was still only a pleasure at the table, but I didn’t understand why such a hard and little or unfertile land could yield such fine wines: now I know.
First of all, what does this French term that is so fashionable mean, terroir? The varied descriptions of the terroir indicate “the sum of geological, topological, climatic, microclimatic and microbiological characteristics of a well determined piece of land” which influence the organoleptic result of a crop. In the case of the vine, the terroir is particularly influential as it is extremely sensitive to the diversities of the terroir in all of its variables: so let’s try to describe our terroir. Innanzitutto, che cosa significa questo termine francese che va tanto di moda, terroir?
First of all we find ourselves on hilly terrain that is particularly steep: to give you an idea, tractor work can often be terrifying due to the risk of overturning. And such a steep terroir is often subject to strong leaching: when the rain hits strongly as it does during a summer storm and enormous quantities of water pour onto the terrain within a very short period of time and tend to “make streams” which carry away enormous quantities of surface land to the bottom of the hillside, where it is then lost. If we think that nature on average produces a millimetre of humus (new earth) each year, in a terroir like ours, the new earth remains for a very short time. Obviously this phenomenon does not occur in the flat lands, and for this reason there is generally more fertile land there. The different geological layers are almost always crossed over by “lenses” of clay, at different depths. These lenses form slippery layers which often cause deep or less deep landslides. Over the millenniums,these landslides have determined areas of “landslide heads” in which the various geological layers have become mixed up, thus increasing the chemical complexity of the terrain thanks to these mix-ups. And when a vineyard slides, which happens from time to time, then there really are problems. The geological composition of the Mastrojanni terroir incorporates clay, which is often full of sodium, in other words full of mineral salt from ancient seas which have now dried up, tuff, limey river pebbles, silica sand, often very ancient sandstone which is usually beige in colour and rarely ashen. Therefore a geological composition – and for that reason chemical – that is extremely complex and variegated which, depending on the geological layer, brings different chemical compounds to the vine’s roots that are the origin of this chemical complexity, and in the end organoleptic quality of the grapes themselves. But the terroir is also made up of nutritional elements and it is obvious that a terrain mainly composed of humus or of fertile land carried by the overflow of rivers (the famous overflows of the Nile) will have a very high fertility, whilst a terroir like the one just described, which actually loses part of its “plant” layer every year because of the rains, will be almost unfertile. Or perhaps it would be better to say, the vine will find little nutriment in the higher geological layers. In fact, it tends to look for nutrients in the area of land known as the plant layer, an area of around 20-30 cm where bacteria live thanks to the presence of oxygen and in which the chemical work of the bacteria produces large quantities of those chemical elements necessary for the vine’s nutrition. However, this area in our vineyards is very slight and in any case always very recent, caused by erosion due to the continuous leaching, in other words there is not enough nutrition in this plant layer.
Climate, and particularly the microclimate, play a fundamental role. Here in central Italy, in any case it rains very little during the summer months. This climatic factor forces the vines to go to the depths in order to find water reserves formed during the winter months. And they have to move quickly as if they don’t they risk becoming dehydrated: could this be the reason that less years are needed here that by our colleagues in Burgundy to create a quality wine, where it rains a lot? Maybe. In the summer time we can have two consecutive months without any rain at all and with temperatures of between 33°C and 40°C during the day. If we add to this the continuous sea breezes, the Maestrale and the Libeccio, we can imagine just how much water the plant has to carry to its leaves in order to keep them “alive and kicking”! Water from the depths. And the wind, which on the one hand has a drying effect, on the other keep the insects and all plant diseases under control which tend to stagnate in the hot and humid air, such as powdery mildew, downy mildew and a variety of other moulds. And this wind that is almost continuous, is another essential ingredient in the quality of our terroir: a wind that at night brings the thermometer down to 17-21°C thus reaching an almost constant night/day temperature range of about 15°C, which is decisively higher than the average in this country and in the majority of vineyard areas.
Everyone knows that a day/night temperature difference is pivotal for the formation of primary aromas in the grapes, but how does this phenomenon work? At night, when temperatures drop to below 20°C the grapeskins store many more antioxidants, such as anthocyans (which are alsoresponsible for the colour of the wine), resveratrol (famous for the “French paradox”) and tannins. These antioxidants are not only good for health, but they are also good for the wine as they protect it from oxidisation enabling longer periods of bottle-ageing. Imagine a wine that ages too quickly, you wouldn’t even be able to enjoy the tertiary phase of its aromas, that is often the most interesting phase, and which is not really perceptible before 8-10 years of ageing. However, these low temperatures also help the flavour precursors to develop, so that the wines from grapes that have grown in cool nights and warm days as a rule tend to be much more aromatic and complex. So we can add the pleasure of a highly aromatic wine to the positive effects it has on our health.
Mount Amiata protects us. The Mastrojanni estate is very close to an imposing mountain: Mount Amiata, a volcano which became extinct 700,000 years ago and which is 1,738 metres high. This mountain determines the Mastrojanni microclimate because, if at night the winds come down from the mountain tops to refresh the vines, when a storm is close by, curiously, this mountain very often tends to divert them thanks to its rising currents which are due to the energy the sun creates along its slopes. We are therefore better protected from hailstorms, for example than other areas in the Municipality of Montanino.
The greatest reward is always the pride of having a wine of great class.
The most important award is to see it improve from year to year and from vintage to vintage.
We don’t work to win prizes but to offer our clients a constant qualitative continuity and maybe an improvement from vintage to vintage.
This is also recognised by the institutions that evaluate wines, from the great international newspapers to the exhibitions and contests. The Mastrojanni wine estate has always held an excellent position in the Brunello di Montalcino panorama and in 2009 from an average of all the results obtained from all of the world’s newspapers, it positioned itself amongst the top ten wine estates of Montalcino. However, our wines have a “long shelf-life”, which means that they almost always reach the top of their organoleptic expression after the outsourcing of its aromas; in other words, a long time after the magazines have forgotten that particular vintage.. Of course, evaluation done at the beginning, when the five-year-old wine is presented to the public, is only indicative as far as the quality is concerned, but very often a wine which at the beginning is less appreciated, ends up evolving into a true party for your palate after 10-15 years.Many of our clients know this and keep their old vintages right where they can see them.
Great stories of excellence are always made by special men.
Special men who create special company culture.
Of course the great lawyer Mastrojanni – who unfortunately I was never able to meet – must have been a man of clear vision and courage.
He came to Montalcino in 1975 and immediately decided to make a wine that would have made history. As he got older he found help in his children and the young Andrea Machetti who took the reins of the company in 1992 transforming it into one of the most highly respected producers in Montalcino.
Andrea is a man of few words and by now knows each of the estate’s vines perfectly. He knows how to grow them and make them feel good bringing ripe fruit year after year because he is there, always there, following every single detail, from a barrel which needs to be replaced or planed to a plant in need of help.
And he knows that this is the only way to make a fine wine: to be at its beck and call.
In those days, already a friend for a long time with Andrea, the poet and winemaker Maurizio Castelli arrived. A world famous winemaker for his fine wines, Maurizio is like Andrea and like the rest of us a “non-interventionist”: he tries to leave the wine to carry out its own evolution, dictated by its own nature.
But it is clear that a winemaker is like a doctor, and he has to know when there is a problem and how to cure it. His trick, like that of the best doctors, is “prevention”. Or rather working in a preventative fashion, through a careful and continuous presence in the winery and systematically controlling in order to protect the wine from any possible “colds” that might attack it.
In this way, thanks to the set up created by Andrea and Maurizio, Mastrojanni wines are free from those rather common interventions which make a wine more “constructed” than “natural”.
Territory:
The oldest vines give their best on sparse land.
Clay, tuff, ancient limy river pebbles, sandstone and almost forty-year-old vines give us the finest grapes.
We are in Montalcino, in the hamlet of Castelnuovo dell’Abate.
The 13th century observation tower which then became the Poderi Loreto and San Pio culminates on the hill at a height of 400 metres, two kilometres from the Orcia River mouth, between the Rocca d’Orcia and Castiglione d’Orcia. 200 m below, the famous overflow river passes.
The vineyards look to the south, south-east, some to south-west. The woods and steep rocks are dispersed like leopard spots. Each has its own geological characteristic: those to the south-east have more clay and tuff with sandstone inserts. The river conglomerate with limy pebbles can be found in the south and south-west facing vineyards.
These are in any case very sparse lands with very low yield which require the vines to have years and years of rooting in order to reach the nutrients they need. For this reason the oldest vines give the best wines, such as that from the famous vigna Cru Schiena d’Asino which takes its name from the shape of the hill, positioned south-east to south-west.
Schiena d’Asino and other vineyards have even more plants than they did in 1975. As one died it was substituted with a new vine to maintain the average age of the vineyard for as long as possible.
The Mastrojanni cellar emerges in the area to the north-east of the estate.
Part of the must ferments in cement and part in wood.
This historic cellar which has grown with the estate today is used for vinification, bottling and bottle ageing. The grapes are destemmed following a careful selection in the vineyard of the ripest and healthiest grape clusters, moving to the historic Mastrojanni cement tanks, where they will ferment for a few days. The best grapes are left to ferment in Vosges wooden vats which allow further tannins from the wood to be attained, as was done in the past.
Once the vinification cycle is complete, the wine is “racked” into large wooden barrels and begins its fining process in wood which can last up to 42 months.Then, once bottled, it will still have to age for at least another six months in the bottle. .
If wine is poetry, let’s respect its sensitivity.
An environment is perfect when its presence is imperceptible.
Our elders did not have cement to throw or iron to strengthen.Only bricks and mortar.But their buildings are beautiful, long-living and irradiate a very pleasant harmony for everyone. This is why we decided to build “in the old way” and my son, Ernesto Illy drew up a plan in bioarchitecture for a new wing of the wood ageing cellar. Stone gabions to hold back the thrust of the hillside in which the cellar is buried, construction walls and brick arches full of terracotta, wooden beams and chestnut flanges and terracotta bricks are the building materials used. Just a little cement, only where absolutely indispensable such as in the edge beams and zero iron so as to avoid those Faraday cages which, with static electricity, always end up creating spiteful magnetic fields.
The wine has to stay here for four years and if the environment is so harmonic as to become imperceptible, then we are sure our wines will be ok and will become even better.
We learnt this sensitivity for the “weak force” from our master mother nature: man is too “brief” to understand certain things immediately.He sees the strength of a lightning bolt because it is an enormous energy, which is extinguished in an instant, but he is unable to see the same energy that extinguishes over years: the work that energy does –in physical terms – is almost the same.So we have to understand the weak forces, because with the help of time they too will become powerful forces too.
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