Biography
Podere Poggio Scalette was born in 1991 when oenologist Vittorio Fiore and his wife Adriana Assjè di Marcorà purchased vineyard plots and a rural construction, abandoned for years, on the hill of Ruffoli between Greve in Chianti and Panzano in Chianti. The first part of the estate was expanded in 1996 with the acquisition of an adjoining property with cellars and other buildings, a purchase which brought the total property to 88 acres, 38 of which consist of vineyards. Vittorio Fiore is part of that small group of consulting winemakers who are part of the Renaissance of Italian wine. Born in Bolzano, educated at San Michele all’Adige and Conegliano, two of Italy’s finest oenological institutes, he was secretary of the association of Italian oenologists before understanding, at the end of the 1970’s, the career of consulting winemaker in Tuscany (and elsewhere). At Poggio Scalette Fiore has concentrated the professional experience of a lifetime. Under his supervision, the estate’s activities are directed by his wife Adriana and, above all, his son Jurij, a graduate of Beaune in 1993, who is in charge of the vineyards and the cellar. The estate produces only one wine, Carbonaione, which takes its name from the plot on which the estate itself was built. Later on, a second wine was added to the line, Piantonaia, a supple, suave Merlot, well concentrated and complex, but the estate’s fame was created by the original wine, a majestic pure Sangiovese, clean and elegant, balanced and vigorous at the same time. The cru itself is a terraced hillside plot rich in calcareous clay stones with a west-southwest exposure, 1300 feet above sea level. But one of its special characteristics are the grapes: the Sangiovese of Carbonaione is not an ordinary Sangiovese, but is produced from 70 year old vines. They were grated onto American rootstock, in fact, in the years immediately following World War I, in the 1920’s: they were the first Chianti Classico vineyards to be replanted after the devastation caused by the phylloxera louse. The are among the rare existing examples of the so-called Lamole clone of Sangiovese, monuments to the viticultural patrimony of Chianti Classico, once trained and pruned in the classic Gobelet system for bush vines, the oldest in the Mediteranean world.