La Torre alle Tolfe
Giacomo Mastretta
Tuscany -- Chianti Colli Senesi DOCG
“One shouldn’t be defined by their work,” Giacomo Mastretta says, without judgment or critique. A man with a certain sage-like sprezzatura, he has come to his life intentionally, leaving what he thought of as the rather cramped confines of Piemonte and learning just what it is that makes Sangiovese tick. Often thought in contrast to one another–culturally perhaps, if not stylistically–Giacomo finds deep, almost philosophical parallels between the grapes. And no matter what he says about work, it’s clear that he is deeply engaged in the crucial task of helping to articulate what matters most about Tuscan grapes First at the helm of a winery in Gaiole, Giacomo has headed south to make wine at La Torre alle Tolfe, one of the most exciting projects in the hills south of Siena.
Giacomo at La Torre alle Tolfe, June 2023
La Torre alle Tolfe, named for the eight-century tower around which the farm is built, is perched high on a hill with a clear view of Siena just a few kilometers away. Owned by the Castelli family for almost 75 years, there is a dialogical sense of history and progress here that Giacamo’s wines comfortably express. In this sandy, warm part of the Chianti zone, the crucial question is how to create refreshing yet complex wines given an ever- warming climate. Within the bounds of low-input winemaking (“I would have no idea what to do with additional technology,” he told me), Giacomo has made creative and thoughtful decisions, yielding incredible results. For example, the estate’s flagship wine, the Chianti Colli Senesi, is now almost entirely Sangiovese, yielding dense but bright, lip-smacking yet intensely earth-driven Chianti. This good decision has generated another: a series of rarely seen monovarietal reds from native Tuscan varieties (Canaiolo, Colorino, Ciliegiolo), almost entirely sold to natural wine cognoscenti of Japan, these are exciting, precise, and well worth their place in the spotlight. The wines of la Torre alle Tolfe have a freshness and character that puts the Colli Senesi itself in a different light, one where purity and power can peacefully coexist, making beautifully distinctive wines from a region where too often the wines can feel drab and over-made.
