Silvio Messana Montesecondo Toscana Sangiovese

About Silvio Messana Montesecondo Toscana Sangiovese

Silvio Messana Montesecondo Toscana Sangiovese is Montesecondo’s largest production and always the first release of the vintage. Montesecondo comprises two separate properties: both are biodynamically farmed and both lie in the San Casciano zone of Chianti Classico. The original family vineyard, generally referred to as “montesecondo”, is lower-altitude, warmer, flatter, and with heavier clay soils in the town of Cerbaia; the newer one, referred to as Vignano for the name of the tiny village, is up at 500 meters and is cooler, hillier and rich in limestone. The fruit for the IGT comes from both properties, often from the younger vines and always picked earlier than that for Chianti and “Tin” red. The bunches are harvested by hand and mainly destemmed, leaving the whole berries intact, but with up to 30% left in whole clusters. The whole berries and clusters are layered in concrete tanks and fermented spontaneously with natural yeasts and no sulfur. The maceration is a short 3-4 days and there are no extractive techniques like punch downs. The wine is aged in concrete for a scant year and bottled with a small amount of sulfur and without fining or filtering. Black cherry, tobacco, spice, and leather bring out the darker side of Sangiovese. Bold and dramatic in the glass, with striking depth as well as translucency.

About Silvio Messana

In a previous life, Silvio Messana was a New Yorker. There had always been this beautiful farm in Tuscany outside of Florence where Silvio’s mother lived. They visited yearly. His father had planted vineyards there in the early 1970s. Since his death, his mother looked after them and sold the grapes to a local
négociant
.
In the mid-1990s, Silvio’s mother was ill and his family decided to move back to be near her. By this time, Silvio had already developed a passion for wine in the United States. With the certain impossibility of finding affordable rent in New York with three growing sons, Silvio and his wife Catalina decided to stay on after his mother’s death, turning the Chianti Classico farm into their home with a portion of the farm converted as a half-year bed-and-breakfast. Silvio immediately began working on the vineyards himself.

The first vintage that Silvio estate bottled was in 2000. There was a lot to learn and unlearn. He made friendships with only a few of the suspicious neighboring Tuscan vignaioli, but Paolo di Marchi of Isole e Olena (himself a foreigner from Piemonte) and his former agronomist Paolo Masi was encouraging and helpful with practical matters.

Catalina was against using any chemicals on the farm, insisting there must be a better way. Gradually through introductions to winemakers outside of the region who were using biodynamic practices (among them Nicolas Joly, Stefano Bellotti of Cascina degli Ulivi, and, indirectly, Sandro Sangiorgio, the director of the wine magazine Porthos), Silvio began to lose his fears and have faith that it was possible. Their advice led the Messanas to take the leap into natural farming and seek a way to make the wine without the use of added yeasts or other enhancers. In the meantime, piece by piece, Silvio built a winemaking facility with his own hands (there was a small winemaking “garage” on the estate before) and things fell into place.

In the vineyards, Silvio has old and younger vines of Sangiovese and Canaiolo with plantings of Colorino and Cabernet Sauvignon. The vineyard is a contiguous 11.5 hectares surrounding the farm and is on the south bank of a ravine, or borro, where there is sunlight on the vines all day long. 2003 was the first vintage fully vinified using only the grapes’ own yeasts.

As with most endeavors, things have evolved for Silvio over the years. Inspired by Elisabetta Foradori, in 2009 a Sangiovese fermented and aged in amphora was released under the name “Tïn” (the name means clay in Arabic). A few vintages later, “Tïn Bianco” was produced from his tiny amount of
Trebbiano. In 2013, Silvio started renting an additional six hectares of Sangiovese. A 30-minute drive from Montesecondo, the vines here are between 20 and 35 years old, growing at 450melevation, which is very high for this part of Tuscany. They have been converted to biodynamics and currently go into the IGT Rosso, adding even more brightness and complexity to the wine. Silvio is open to making new cuvées with these terroirs once he has familiarized himself with them more.