Cosimo Maria Masini and his family grow grapes on their small Tuscan estate, alongside wheat, vegetables, ducks, chickens, and olives. Theirs is an example of integrated farming at it’s height: chickens lay eggs that are combined with wheat to make pasta which can then be dressed in their own tomatoes and drizzled with olive oil from the rare Mignola Cerretana variety, all of which pair wonderfully with their white and red wines. Idyllic as this sounds, it’s a lifestyle that the Masini family chose to build for themselves for reasons of taste, conscience, and health. The wines are named for family members and members of the team: Nicole, Nicolo, Annick, Fedardo are both individuals and delicious bottles of wine.
Sangiovese dominates the plantings, from the young vines that provide most of the wine in Sincero, to the mature, elegant, and unblended Nicole. Cabernet Sauvignon gives Nicolo it’s body and backbone, while small amounts of Cabernet Franc also make it into that blend.
For the whites, Annick includes more or less equal parts Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, vinified without oak, while Daphné is their pure Trebbiano, fermented on the skins of the grapes and aged on it’s lees. Daphné is a bit of a wild hare in that it shows a bit like a red wine in tastings and can pair with a surprising range of dishes, including, but not limited to, well, small game like hare.
when did the winery start? when might you open a bottle?
Cosimo purchased the property in 1999 and set about it’s conversion to biodynamic farming soon thereafter. Grapes have been grown on the land for decades, if not centuries. The family is proud that Fedardo, for whom their dessert wine is named, has stayed with them as a lead farmhand and continues his more than sixty years of experience on the land.
There are wines from the estate for most any type of meal. Sincero and Annick are wines of preparation, i.e. we drink them most often while cooking and preparing a meal. Nicole is Sangiovese as Pinot Noir, or perhaps Nebbiolo; light tannin, elegant fruit and bright acidity.
This is analagous to a bottle of excellent Bourgogne Rouge in terms of where it might fit in a meal. Nicolo, with it’s Cabernet base and Bordeaux like nose fits in to meals with the carne course and plays well with many aged cheeses. Daphé is a wine for a meal and for slow drinking.
where is the winery?
In the northern reaches of the Chianti DOC between Pisa and Florence is the town of San Miniato. All of the vineyards are contiguous with the estate and the winery and cellar are on site. This location is roughly thirty miles from the coast and it used to be under the sea. As a result, the site is strewn with fossilized shells that amend the soil as minerals leech out over time and provide a dramatic backdrop to vineyard tours that take on a feel of a treasure hunt.
Well versed Italian gourmets will know San Miniato as the Tuscan home of the white truffle. An immensely rare treat that perfumes risotto, accompanies Daphné gracefully, and is fêted at the end of November each year at the world reknown San Miniato truffle festival.
why is it a candid wine? why might you want a taste?
Unexpected as it was, we “met” the winery at a networking event in Chicago. It turns out that this tiny Tuscan winery had hired a German woman as their sales manager whose uncle lives north of the city. Now, if we had a nickel for every person who ever said “you should import a wine I tasted in Tuscany” we’d have enough nickels to fly to the Truffle festival in San Miniato. This one is different though.
We have never visited a more integrated farm in our travels to vineyards across the world. There is a palpable vitality at the estate that shows in the wines. Native yeast and predominantly concrete fermenting tanks transfer the purity of the juice into each bottle, and we think their wines are an example of the best of what can be grown in Northern Tuscany.
Why might you like to taste? We think Cosimo’s Sangiovese is unique and rare in it’s clarity and precision, and his Trebbiano is a wine white wine for red wine lovers, layered and textured as it is. Both are terrific values as well.
And the German sales manager? She is Lee Greene, who many in the US now know as the founder of The Scrumptious Pantry, which does for food producers what we aim to do for wineries – promoting the best products available and the people who make them possible. No surprise then that her uncle’s recommendation proved fruitful.
how is it made?
Literally moments into our first visit to the winery, Cosimo walked us into the vineyard and presented an abnormally large root ball, attached to what appeared to be a weed. The point was clear: this is how the wines are made, in the vineyard, in healthy loose soil that is the product of careful, intentional farming. And it wasn’t a weed, it was a plant encouraged to grow alongside the vines to loosen the soil and capture nitrogen.
In all honesty, Cosimo’s vineyard look a mess, until you look more closely, and then they look alive. Where neat rows, carefully pruned vines and weed free dirt are the hallmarks of many vineyards that surround Tuscan villas, these vines are wild, the soil is alive and the resulting grapes are unique.
The same ethos pervades work in the cellar where native yeasts spark fermentation and the wines are fermented in vessels that highlight each variety’s inherent nature – concrete for the Sangiovese, stainless steel for the Sauvignon Blanc, and neutral oak for the Trebbiano and Cabernet Sauvignon.
