Blog of Torciano Winery
Many thanks to our friend for this beautiful review of here experience at Torciano Winery!
With only one day in Tuscany, I have no doubt in my mind that we spent it at the perfect winery. At Tenuta Torciano in San Gimignano, we were treated to a private wine tasting with lunch. It consisted of 11 wines, 4 courses of food, and a comedic tasting lesson by Pierluigi.
Pierluigi is quite animated, and broke off from the typical snobby sommelier stereotype. While being educated on wine, we discovered that a good chardonnay should exude a “cat piss” scent on the nose. After 3 wines down, the table gets giggly and we rave about the 30 year aged balsamic on our plates of salad, cheese, and prosciutto.
Another 4 wines down and my lips and teeth start to turn a shade of deep purple, stained by Chianti after Chianti. We are presented a slice of Lasagna Bolognese, drowned in a heavy pour of the winery’s truffle oil. I decide, life isn’t worth living if I can’t have a supply of this oil, so we add a few bottles of it to our order form. It was, by far, the best dish of the trip.
At about 9 wine samples into the meal, there’s a crescendo of laughter and a lot of chatter. Our next dish is the vegetarian Ribollita Tuscan Soup, with beans and cabbage. Somewhere between sample #10 and sample #11 I lost all sense of table etiquette and devoured the food like a cavewoman.
After we successfully polish off 11 wine samples each, we are given a dessert wine with biscotti to dunk in it. Followed by a few samples of their fine wine. Thanks to the incoherent scribbles on our note pads, we remember that our favorite wine of the original 11 samples was the Chianti Classico Reserve, and we add it to our order form.
We leave the dining room and enjoy the fresh spring air outside at the vineyard. I lay on the ground for a moment, marinating in the limbo between tipsy and drunk, while the sun beams down on my dumbstruck wine-stained grin. We thank Pierluigi for our wonderful experience and making us feel like special guests, like family. Back into the car we go. We drive 3 hours to Rome, and I slept for 2.
Author
Luciana Cilemmi
Luciana Cilemmi, deals with Magazine, Style Director and Co-founder of Tenuta Torciano winery and Tenute Giachi wines and the innovative Viviarium Restaurant of Bottega Torciano- Tenuta Torciano & Winery is part of an international reality that is born in Italy by an initiative of Pierluigi Giachi and Luciana Cilemmi, who have worked for years in the Italian wine market , expanding throughout in the United States, managed and controlled by the american company ' Bellavini winery. Luciana Cilemmi was born in San Gimignano to a family of artists specialised in the restoration of medieval buildings. Having completed her technical studies, she now pursues the interests passed on to her by her family, like her passion for artistic objects, in particular works of art created in Tuscany between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. But she reserves her keenest enthusiasm for the historic works completed in San Gimignano between 1100 and 1300. Alongside her love of medieval history, she is fascinated in wines produced from Tuscan vineyards, which, together with saffron and wool, were the most sought-after goods traded by the wealthy noble families of San Gimignano already in medieval times. Luciana Cilemmi left San Gimignano at the age of 21 and embarked on a pilgrimage in search of knowledge and to discover the new winemaking skills and products that were then developing both in Italy and in France. In the meantime she added to her knowledge of wine by attending specialised courses and becoming a master of wine. On returning to Siena, she discovered a wonderful area near Murlo where she fell in love with the tiny, unspoilt village of Montepescini. She bought the estate of Montepescini where, based on the experience she had acquired over the years, she found a particular lie of the land, special climatic conditions and an altitude suited to the creation of great wines. With enormous enthusiasm, doggedness and considerable effort, a reclamation programme was started to renew the terrain which was then used to plant 30 hectares of specialised vines. Sangiovese is the dominant vine, followed by Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah. Years of experimentation and the introduction of new winemaking techniques eventually led to the creation of Luciana di Memmi’s prestigious wines. Some years ago, Luciana Cilemmi succeeded in realising her dream of a lifetime: to return to her home town, San Gimignano. She was destined to buy the historic palace with the medieval tower, which had been owned by the prestigious Useppi family from 1200 to 1927 and had then passed to the noble and historic Chigi family of Siena. The Useppi were a powerful Sienese family who owned several castles. This beautiful medieval building has an elegant and distinctive façade full of Sienese and Pisan architectural influences. If you find yourself in San Gimignano, make sure you visit the Chigi Tower and Palace. Luciana Cilemmi holds regular events in the rooms of the medieval tower, such as the presentation of wines, both from her vineyards and elsewhere, attended by international journalists, experts from the sector and critics. She also organises exhibitions of works of art and paintings, and press conferences on the subject of "Wine in San Gimignano during medieval times”. Visiting the home of Luciana Cilemmi is like re-living an aspect of the past that will not return except through the imagination of those who have believed and continue to believe in this story.
