I fell in love with wine in Poggibonsi. It was nothing special. A hard-hitting, tannin-crazy Sangiovese: your typical contadino wine. Black as ink, dark as the devil, intense like a tropical Tuscan summer storm: before that first sip I was your average English girl with average English girl drinking habits. Pints of Foster’s at university, my wine knowledge brimmeth no farther than the Gallo brothers’ Ruby Cabernet.
This morning I took part in my first vendemmia. A moment long overdue as someone who purports to write about wine and something I had been postponing year after year based on the maximum potential for embarrassing mistakes on my part and wildly high expectations. Would the grape harvest be that emotional experience I had built up so romantically in my mind? Would I fare una figuraccia and kill the vintage with my snippers?
Il Borro, the estate owned by the Ferragamo family in the Arezzo countryside, is a bucolic haven, an organic paradise of farming and viticulture. The sort of place you dream about and return to at the first opportunity. (I was there only a fortnight ago on a separate wine-writing mission.)
Salvatore Ferragamo is a laidback, humble host who, like any farmer, knows his land with a poignant but practical intimacy. “It’s going to rain. When the clouds are dark that side,” he says to me, pointing down over the Merlot vineyard we’d spent the morning picking, “it passes us by. But when it’s dark over the hills, we can expect a downpour.”
But before that storm hit, from row to row, we worked together, farmworkers and journalists, Ferragamos of every generation and friends of the fashion family, bloggers and oenologists, in the ochre mud, topped in straw hats and tailed in Hunter boots, our fingers green in gloves and wielding red pliers. The grapes were sweet as the sun, but sweeter still was the companionship.
An hour of no “social” time, but of 100% sociability, a long tavolata styled in a red-and-white checked picnic-style tablecloth greeted the hungry pickers. Sating stomachs and souls after our vineyard adventures were heaped bowls of oh-so-fresh salad grown on the estate by Vittoria Ferragamo (the Orto del Borro organic veggie boxes are available by home delivery to addresses in Florence), the deepest red pappa al pomodoro ladled out by Andrea Campani, the chef at gourmet restaurant Osteria del Borro and Il Borro Tuscan Bistro (also in Florence at lungarno Acciaiuoli 80R), and glasses of the fossil-like yet fruity white 100% Chardonnay Lamelle (a personal favourite) and the heady Syrah and Sangiovese blend Pian di Nova.
Il Borro is a winery to watch. Winemaker Stefano Chioccioli is universally regarded as a genius. He’s the demi-god behind many of Tuscany’s most recent successes—and changes. 100% Sangiovese sparklers are his latest effervescent brilliance: Il Borro’s Bolle di Borro and Baracchi’s Brut Rosé Metodo Classico Sangiovese Millesimato are two superb expressions of the sparkling future of Tuscany’s myriad native grapes. With his intense gaze and manifest passion for all things vino, Chioccioli stressed to me, “But this is where my work begins, here in the vineyard, the source of all the quality.”
I fell in love with grapes in San Giustino Valdarno. They were very special. Sweet and soulful, blessed by the sunlight, licked by the clay and saved from the rain. Now the waiting begins: to taste Il Borro IGT 2016, when we can humbly say, “We made this. Together.”
