Castiglion del Bosco

Coming back to the resort in defeat is probably not something i will willingly do…  the chinese are drinking more wine, have you discovered that their palettes are different from the eurocentric ones or they just following what is good because the western world believes it is?

I don’t believe I’m an expert and I won’t change my wines accordingly. We do our wines because we believe in them and hopefully people like them. There are a lot of variables, even in New York,  different habits. For instance,  when I was young, the adults were having gin and tonic and negroni for dinner and that has changed drastically.

Today, not all places in Asia are the same, there’s a certain sophistication in some places more than others, obviously, those just starting will gravitate towards familiar names – sometimes, even “expensive is better” is a concept they will have in their minds – but this isn’t the case of Italian wines because we have a broader range of valuable, great wines for the price.

Personally, I believe it’s a question of food because it’s more difficult in some cases in Asia where food is more spicy or use more herbs and it numbs the palate for tasting the wine but all this is something which will evolve. There’s no black or white. The more they taste it, the more they want to drink wine.

In this part of the world, very rarely do we combine wines with our meals because of the flavour issues you previously mentioned, do you have any ideas of how to combine wines and make it part of our meal routines?

I will make a lot of people unhappy with this statement but I believe that pairing is overrated and should not even enter the equation, because if you have a good wine, you can enjoy it over dinner with friends regardless of what you’re having. It’s really about how you enjoy it, there’s no reason to be obsessed about pairing. I personally go with seasons: when its cold, red. When it’s hot, both.

It really depends if you want to freshen up then a champagne or white will suffice or having a cigar with friends, a red comes into play. The myth of pairing is something which should relax a little, having said this, i have total respect for the great chefs and sommeliers who take the effort to put together elements which complement each other.

Finally, do you have any plans to incorporate a leather artisan’s workshop in some corner of the estate?

No, one shouldn’t add complication to a pure experience- wine is very different from what we offer at Ferragamo and if they want to experience shopping, we also organise shopping trips in Florence. What we do have, is a small shop in the estate curated by my wife where she finds unbranded things from the independent artisans around Tuscany, we will definitely not try not to mix and spoil the authentic Tuscan experience.

Massimo Ferragamo on Winemaking at Castiglion del Bosco resort

The US-based Ferragamo travels often to the Tuscany wine resort for months of the year and he spoke exclusively to LUXUO during his recent visit to Singapore about his loves of wine, restoration and the glorious heritage the region.

How does one go from fine leather goods into wine making?

Very easy, it’s all about items which speak about an exclusive experience: tasting and drinking fine wine belongs to that category. There was also an emotional element to my decision, I like to collect fine wines and I was always intrigued behind the history about it. The 800 year old Montalcino in Tuscany was something which combined both.

I live in New York, but during one of my many visits to Tuscany, I came upon an area of the region I didn’t know very well – Montalcino in Val d’Orcia. 90% of the time, the most fabulous wines come from the most beautiful places, case in point the fruits of the vines here produced the famed Brunello di Montalcino wine.

Combining my interest in restoration projects in older wineries, we found Castiglion del Bosco, a 2000 hectares wine estate with 60 hectares of vineyards, making us the 5th producer out of 240 producers. It had a great past but needed to be brought back to the level where it could once again be producing the finest wines in Italy.

This is sort of your second career, what sort of experience do you bring into setting up the estate and turning it into a resort?

I saw an estate in poor condition but had a vision of the potential of what it could become. It had a glorious past, the winery was one of the seven pioneers of the Brunello di Montalcino denomination and had been producing wines since the early 1900s and it just had an unlucky couple of decades which saw it go through different owners. A property like Castiglion del Bosco had to be nurtured and brought back to life.

First, we had inherited Brunello di Montalcino wines left for five years in the cellar. Second, all the other buildings and houses were left to decay because all the farmers had left in the 50s and 60s. Finally, I was driven by the idea of making all these parts work together and for each other.

I have been living for America for the last 20 years and i can tell you that besides daily operations of the House of Ferragamo, our office was like a travel agent, friends calling asking where should i go, what should i do. Plus, I also learnt that the comments of the experience when they returned where always similar: that Tuscany was beautiful but the house wasn’t air-conditioned or lacked certain creature comforts; or that the food was great but there was always a something lacking.

I was probably absorbing this information for many years but didn’t realise, i didn’t like calling it a resort but i wanted a place to have people come and stay and have a thoroughly good experience, i was driven by the fact that i wanted to put people in the front row to experience everything Tuscany has to offer including its authenticity.

How do you describe Castiglion del Bosco?

There are three elements to Castiglion del Bosco – the winery, the heart of the project. Hospitality at great level, not lavish but authentic to Tuscany; Finally, the 18-hole golf course where we used the beautiful fields to great effect – the only private golf course of italy. So people come to the property to stay and enjoy many of the activities we offer and so the property is back to a fine state – if we made only the wine, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to restore the village and the church with frescos from 1350. You have duty to bring it back. 50 years ago, it was farmland and it lived in another era, today, you have to give it purpose to make it live again.

Wine estate and hotel resort isn’t the type of thing that usually goes together, how did you have this idea?

Every idea I had was dictated by what I found. You had all these old buildings in a protected UNESCO heritage area. The buildings were all falling down, and the area was as you found it, trapped in the time of the 15th century, the vineyards and even an abandoned church with frescoes from the 1350s. How does one go about preserving all of this? In a protected heritage area, you cannot build new buildings, you can only restore existing ones. On the wine side it was clear, we needed a new winery facility because the old facilities were no longer conducive to modern wine making which is very precise and required new technologies like climate control. Meanwhile we preserved the good vines ranging from 6 years old to 15 years old and replaced vines where 45 years old that weren’t producing anymore.

I asked myself what we could to do restore them for use because part of the maintenance and injecting life back into them requires that they be used and so the resort came about – the idea of giving the real Tuscany for people to experience.

Was this the kind of dream you always had or was it something you heard your father talk about and then it became yours?

No, i think we have always been lucky because I grew up in the outskirts of Florence so i was always surrounded by greenery. My playgrounds were the woods, my brothers built little carts for racing down slopes in the wilderness, we were always outdoors playing soccer and I never really thought I would develop a passion for wine to the level that i have and again, Tuscany was always in my heart. I thought I was going to have a much smaller estate but when the opportunity arose, it felt almost like a call of duty.

I am a family man and in most of my research, visits to Tuscan vineyards are not very child friendly… what do kids do when the adults are having wine?

Good question. I am a family man myself so i had that in mind. Castiglion del Bosco can be couples oriented or entire families can come. There are morning and afternoon of activities for kids, we have a kids club, kids initiatives and even a farm where they can go pet the animals and that’s the most fascinating because most city kids have seen an animal in their lives!

There are also facilities for swimming, tennis, soccer and naturally wide open fields for running and playing. Past a certain age, they might like to play golf or go biking or hiking. That said, it’s challenging terrain to cycle, you have to get a guide, especially when you go downhill thinking it’s fabulous but then most don’t consider how they’re going to cycle back up, so we have a number where you can call the concierge and they can come get you.

In 2003, after his beginnings as a wine producer at the Tenuta di Prima Pietra in Riparbella in the upper Maremma, Massimo Ferragamo created his quintessential Tuscany, composed of vineyards, guests to be welcomed as friends, beautiful artistry and nights bursting with stars. Today, Castiglion del Bosco is all of this and beyond. 

Castiglion del Bosco has two separate vineyard sites, the 20-hectare Gauggiole vineyard, just beneath the Borgo, and Capanna, of 42 hectares. The latter is ‘The Vineyard’ of the estate, a single parcel that winds along the ridge of the hill like an enormous river of green. Capanna faces southwest, at elevations that begin at 350 metres and reach 460. ‘The Vineyard’, registered exclusively to Brunello production, is subdivided into separate parcels, beginning with the top of the hill, which is called Campo del Drago, and extending down to the foot of the slope. Gauggiole vineyard, on the northern side of the estate, is mainly dedicated to the production of Rosso di Montalcino. 

Only Sangiovese grapes are planted in Castiglion del Bosco and the whole range of wines produced is inspired to the great appellations of the territory, from the pleasant Rosso di Montalcino to the great classic Brunello, showcased in three different interpretations. In fact, next to the traditional Brunello di Montalcino, Castiglion del Bosco also produces a sumptuous single vineyard called Campo del Drago and a magnum-only Brunello Riserva named Millecento, made only in great vintages.

Castiglion del Bosco is located in the northwest of Montalcino, where the rocky, nutrient-poor soils are perfect for yielding wines of superb structure and complexity.
The estate's 2,000 hectares are largely occupied by dense woods of holm oak, oak, and beech, in addition to meadows, organically-farmed crops and 62 hectares of vineyard planted exclusively to Sangiovese. There are two completely distinct growing sections, each different as to aspect, soils, and weather conditions: the 20-hectare Gauggiole vineyard, just beneath the borgo, and Capanna, with 42 hectares.

Along with its Montalcino vineyards, Castiglion del Bosco owns a 10 hectares estate called Prima Pietra in Riparbella, close to the Bolgheri wine area on the Tuscan coast. The vines face the Tyrrhenian sea at some 450 metres' elevation, in an almost pristine natural environment. The vines face the Tyrrhenian sea, in an almost pristine natural environment; the site enjoys abundant sun and ventilation, and the iron-rich, rocky soils ensure wines of superb structure. There, after in-depth soil and climate research, the technical team, planted merlot, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, and petit verdot, at a density of 9,600 vines per hectare. These Bordeaux varieties flourish in this terroir, producing wonderfully expressive fruit.

Nestled against the side of a hill, almost out of sight, the new wine cellar was designed to coax the absolute best from the grapes grown in Castiglion del Bosco's vineyards. The sangiovese grapes are quality-selected in the vineyards first, then the clusters travel two sorting tables, where trained eyes make a further selection of the finest fruit.

The clusters are then gravity-fed into 100-150hl tanks on the lower level, which are arranged in suitable sizes to ferment the various vineyard lots separately. When the fermentations are complete, the wines go to a spacious, climate-controlled area that is partially underground, containing French oak barriques and barrels. From the tasting room, visitors can enjoy a gorgeous view from a glass walkway extending out over the barrique cellar. The process continues with bottle-ageing, which, depending on the wine, may last from 6 to 36 months before release. Winemaking at Castiglion del Bosco is managed by Cecilia Leoneschi who has been at the winery since 2003

1313: Badia Ardenga, a handsome abbey located near the Fiume Ombrone, is visited by emperors and popes traveling along the ancient Via Franciegena route. Built before 1000 AD, the original formation is still intact today. According to legend, German Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg and his army went to the abbey to take communion during their stop in Buonconvento in 1313. Allegedly, the monks poisoned the Eucharist and the emperor was found dead in the church.

1318: Castiglion del Bosco is taken over by the Gallerani family – prosperous merchants who held public offices in Siena. It has been claimed that Cecilia Gallerani, was the subject of Leonardo da Vinci's painting "The Lady with an Ermine" and a muse for the "Mona Lisa".

1339: Upon Ciampolo Gallerani's death, ownership of Castiglion del Bosco passes to the Piccolomini family, who conquered the castle after a long and bloody siege. During this period, the fortification was restored.

1345: Pietro Lorenzetti paints the fresco "Annunciazione dei Santi" in the Church of San Michele in Castiglion del Bosco's Il Borgo. It was rediscovered in 1876 and fully restored to its original glory. Pietro and his brother, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, who painted the Allegory of Good Government and Bad Government fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, belonged to the famous Sienese School which flourished during the late Middle Ages and foreshadowed the art of the Renaissance.

1888: Ferruccio Biondi Santi, who is said to have resided on the Castiglion del Bosco Estate, concentrates on an isolated Sangiovese clone to produce the first bottles of what will become Tuscany's most prestigious red wine denomination, Brunello di Montalcino.

1960s: There are only a handful of Brunello di Montalcino wine producers.

1967: Castiglion del Bosco becomes one of the founding members of the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino. The organization is created as a voluntary association of producers who regulate and control the quality of Brunello production. Brunello is among the first Italian wines to be granted the titles DOC (Controlled Denomination of Origin) and DOCG (Controlled and Guaranteed Denomination of Origin).

1972: The Val d'Orcia is considered a site of 'outstanding universal value' by the World Heritage Committee according to Article 1 of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, making Castiglion del Bosco a World Heritage Site.

1975: The number of Brunello di Montalcino producers increases to 25 vintners producing approximately 70,000 cases.

1995: According to the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino, 120 producers made 300,000 cases of wine in 1995. Today, there are well over 200 producers in the Consorzio producing more than 500,000 cases of Brunello.

1996: The Val d'Orcia Artistic, Natural and Cultural Park is founded. The Park, which encompasses the Castiglion del Bosco property, is an Area Naturale Protetta di Interesse Locale focused on increasing awareness of cultural and environmental heritage, as well as manufacturing and marketing of local products

2003: After his beginnings as a wine producer at the Tenuta di Prima Pietra in Riparbella, in the upper Maremma, Massimo Ferragamo purchases the estate and begins restoration of both architectural and winemaking facets of the estate.

2004: The new cellar is built with a capacity of 3,000 hectolitres. A modern and efficient structure on two levels, built against the hillslope and almost hidden.

2008-2009: Castiglion del Bosco inaugurates its first nine guest Villas, and Il Borgo is unveiled after painstaking restorations, offering 23 elegantly appointed guest Suites.

2010: Castiglion del Bosco Golf Club is founded and unveil its magnificent 18 holes course designed by Tom Weiskopf.

2013: The estate celebrates its 10th anniversary under the new ownership. The Borgo facilities are considered among the best and most exclusive resorts in Tuscany. The wines are constantly renowned for their quality and they are distributed in great part of the world with success.