Riecine

Riecine was originally owned by a nearby monastery until the 20th century, in fact the church archives from 1112 A.D. provide the earliest known record of the wine farm called Riecine. Is very close to excavations of an Etruscan township. It is possible that wine has been produced in the hills around Riecine even before the XII century.

Riecine is located in the heart of Tuscany, 60 km South-East of Florence, 35 km North-East of Siena, in the community of Gaiole in Chianti. Riecine vineyards are among the finest of Chianti Classico area. For many decades Riecine winery has maintained the reputation of a true Sangiovese specialist.

The founder of contemporary Riecine John Dunkley, an Englishman who became one of the most admired producers of the new style Chianti Classico, based on Sangiovese. With his Italian wife Palmina Abbagnano, John acquired the original 1.5 hectares of land in 1971 from the nearby monastery of Badia a Coltibuono. They restored the old stone villa on the land and began reviving and replanting vines. The first vintage of Chianti Classico, 1973, was released in 1975.

A close friend of John and Palmina, Carlo Ferrini, played an important role in the birth and growth of Riecine wines, giving his enological advices to Riecine until 1997.

John Dunkley was respected as one of Chianti’s most astute interpreter. He always maintained that Cabernet varieties permitted under DOCG rules for Chianti Classico had no place in the vineyards of Riecine. As he once put it: “When Baron Philippe de Rothschild plants Sangiovese, I’ll switch to Cabernet Sauvignon.”

In 1991, John and Palmina, hired as an intern a young winemaker, Sean O’Callaghan, who began to join the team as an internal Riecine winemaker, to become later one of the recent interpeter of Riecine’s wines style.

Although John and Palmina are no longer around, their inspiration still guides our philosophy and work at Riecine.

Since 2011 Riecine has been family-owned and led by Lana Frank. The family is strongly committed to maintain the philosophy of Riecine and to provide everything necessary for Riecine team to produce the great wines from the terroir, and is totally focused on quality aspects of all operations in the vineyards and cantina.

We are proud of Riecine’s traditions, and are dedicated to maintaining them. Over the past several years, Riecine wines have advanced in quality to the highest levels and are enjoyed today by wine lovers in all corners of the world.

The intentional location of our vineyards in various different terrains provides Riecine with some protection from extreme weather conditions such as hail and frost, and importantly, produces grapes with different characteristics and nuances so that we can produce complex, elegant wines that are still distinctly Riecine.

Riecine is a rare example of what can be achieved through handcrafted, artisan individual care and attention.

In house Riecine’s Winemaker and General Manager from 2015 is Alessandro Campatelli that leads the entire winemaking process with the precious help of the historical Riecine team.

The grapes are destalked into shallow bins and then all softly crushed before being dropped into either cement, stainless steel, oak or open topped bins.

The fermentation is carefully controlled by Alessandro to ensure proper temperature and perfect extraction of soft tannins, colour and flavour.

Once in the tanks we run off a “salasso” of about 10-20% of the juice. This process increases the ratio of skins to juice in the remaining must. In this way we manage to have more concentration in the finished wines.

All the wines are fermented with their own natural yeasts and therefore start off very slowly. This adds character but also has the bonus of causing a cold maceration that lasts normally 3 to 4 days. 

Some of the grapes are fermented in small lots of 1,200 liters open fermentation wooden tanks. The cap is hand punched down 4 times a day. The other grapes are crushed lightly into 5,000 liter open top cement  tanks. These are pumped over 4 times a day and then the cap punched down by hand.

During the process we also do various iterations of “delestage” (12 hours rack and return) to increase oxygen uptake and to mix up the cap. Everything is normally racked-off after about 25 days, first into tanks and then into barrels.

Depending on the vintage and vineyards, the wines will go into barriques, (both new and second- use), tonneaux, stainless steel or big traditional barrels. The wines are matured separately in their vineyard lots for up to 2 years for the Riecine IGT and La Gioia and 12-18 months for the Chianti Classico.

After aging, the wines are selected by Alessandro for bottling. If at any point in the process the grapes or the wines do not meet our rigid quality review, they are not bottled as original Riecine wines. The aging of each lot separately gives our winemaker the ultimate blending options at bottling time. Both La Gioia and Riecine di Riecine are aged in bottle at least 9 months before releasing.