from southern Italy, but Selvapiana had a long tradition of bottling its own wines extending way back to the early years of the 20th century. Thanks to the family tradition of bottling their wines, they were sold in restaurants in Milan and Rome between the wars. During World War II, however, Selvapiana was occupied by soldiers of the German army who drank their fill of the cellar, so the winery was forced to start all over again with the 1947 vintage.


Sticking to Rufina guns 1977 had been the debut vintage of Montevertine’s Le Pergole Torte, the first 100 percent Super-Tuscan made from pure Sangiovese. Others were now stepping outside the DOC regulations, and while the new Super-Tuscans were getting all the press—and better prices— Francesco Giuntini stuck to his Chianti Rufina guns. Meanwhile, furious about the new DOC laws of 1967 because of their legal acceptance of white grapes and wines from the south, the pioneering Italian wine author Luigi Veronelli pushed the likes of Antinori to make Tignanello, first produced in 1971 (which contained Malvasia but no Cabernet Sauvignon until 1975). He was a motivating force behind Sassicaia, and as a vocal supporter of producers making single-vineyard wine, he encouraged Selvapiana, too. Indeed, the idea of creating Bucerchiale as a single-vineyard wine was Veronelli’s. The talented winemaker Franco Bernabei—“an exuberant character who does what he can to ensure the estate can best express its own character,” says Liberty Wines’ David Gleave MW— started consulting at Selvapiana in 1978. Coinciding with the renaissance of Tuscan wines, 1979 was the first vintage of Vigneto Bucerchiale, then planted to Sangiovese. Between 1973 and 1985, vinification was carried out in cement for 15 days of fermentation and maceration, with little pumping-over and with temperature control. The wine was aged in 25hl chestnut casks between three and five years old, and yields doubled to between 4kg and 5kg per vine. By the mid-1980s, Selvapiana was starting to sell its wines outside Italy. Thanks to the ageability of Chianti Rufina, it had a good reputation for its older vintages. When Giuntini first released it, he wrote “Vigneto Bucerchiale” on the


Chianti Rufina label, but it wasn’t until 1985 that Bucerchiale was given its own designer label, with a view to launching the wine in the US. Rufina is very much an area with its own distinct identity and dignity. Located close to the foothills of the Apennines, the estate’s south-facing slopes enjoy a cool breeze blowing from the Sieve Valley, with nights that are quite cold, even in a warm summer. In the northernmost area of the Rufina subzone, the Bucerchiale vineyard, replanted in 1968 on mainly clay and limestone soils, is southwest-facing at an altitude of 800ft (250m) above sea level, so it’s blessed with an abundance of sunshine at the end of the day. Current owner-winemaker Federico


Giuntini Masseti (Franco Masseti’s son, adopted by Francesco when Franco died) joined the enterprise in 1987. As he said in an interview with Carlo Macchi in 2021, “I started with 25ha [62 acres] when I was working with Francesco in the early 1990s. Now the estate includes 70ha [173 acres] under vines.” There are two groups: the first at a density of 8 x 2.5ft (2.4 x 0.8m) with 5,400 plants per hectare, then a second generation at 6.5 x 2.5ft (2 x 0.8m). The scions come from a massal selection of the 12.5ha


(31-acre) Bucerchiale vineyard, from clones of Professor Scienza and from clones of Guillame derived from the experimentation of the Chianti Classico 2000 project. Originally spur-pruned, Selvapiana changed to cane-pruning for the more recent vines and some of the old vines of the 1990s. Thanks to a higher density now of 5,500 vines, a good yield today is 7 tons to the hectare, compared with 4 tons from the older vineyards. The estate has been organically cultivated since 1992. In the face of climate change, Federico now prunes longer and looks for looser bunches with grassing in summer, less fertilization and thinning, for lower yields to achieve greater elegance and balance. The manual harvest is vineyard by vineyard at the right point of ripeness, and grapes go to a sorting bench and then a new- generation destemmer that is almost an optical selector, choosing whole berries but not whole bunches with stalks. Since 1990, vinification has been


carried out in stainless steel for 25–30 days of fermentation at between 82°F and 90°F (28–32°C) with temperature control and maceration. Native yeasts are used, with three to four pump-overs per day. Between 60 and 70 percent of the wines are racked into large casks, the rest into small French oak, spending 18 months and one year in bottle before release, with a total production of around 300,000 bottles. Recently, Federico has been joined in the cellar by his own son Niccolò. Francesco is now in his 90s and frail—but with vigor, imagination, and an eye to tradition, the new broom at Selvapiana looks set to maintain (and maybe even improve on) the hard-won reputation for quality and longevity that now spans three centuries. 


Above (top): The French oak barrels in which 30–40% of the wine is aged; (bottom) owner- winemaker Federico Giuntini Masseti.


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 | 103


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