Cantina Cenci
Giovanni Cenci
Umbria – Perugia, San Biagio delle Valle IGT
We came to Giovanni Cenci because we were looking for world- class Italian white wine–and frankly, we got even more than we bargained for. Once the site of a monastery of the Olivetan order, Giovanni Cenci lives and works his family’s generations- old farm, producing some of the most compelling, complete wines of the region. The family farm spans 30 hectares for grains and grazing, with only 7 hectares planted to ancient clones of Grechetto, Trebbiano Toscana, Sangiovese, Merlot, and more; above all, this is an ecosystem for living, not a winery for churning out bottles. Wine has of course been crucial to this site for hundreds of years, not just because of the people who have worked the land, but rather the uniqueness of the place itself: massive blocks of travertine marble are visible alongside limestone-rich clay soils, giving the wines definition alongside meaningful substance.
Giovanni in the Cantina, June 2023
Giovanni is a passionate, articulate, and thoughtful person, with an artisan’s eye to making beautiful everything he sees. This includes the scrap metal from old machines, which he makes into incredible pieces–astrolabes, animals, and the like–on the property, and adorn some of his labels. There is a spirit of reinvention here that translates into the wines: whereas Umbria is often seen either as a source for lean, often insipid whites, or for the famously ferocious Sagrantino (grown further east), Cantina Cenci’s wines have a totally different frame, with palate-driven whites and detailed, complex reds. Giovanni has himself traveled across Europe, working with biodynamic producers from farms like his; his accumulated experience gives us a series of wines that are precise, satisfying, and unique.
