A wonderful encounter of Art and Wine
Castello Romitorio is fully committed to exploring and promoting Brunello di Montalcino DOCG Wines.
In 1984 the estate was founded by Sandro Chia, who planted vineyards using only Sangiovese. Today, these vineyards compromise about half of the vineyards at Castello Romitorio and offer an enormous heritage of biodiversity.
In 2006 Sandro’s son Filippo followed in his fathers footsteps. He created a new cellar, and some new vineyards of Sangiovese. These vineyards are amongst the highest in altitude in all of Montalcino.
So let’s talk a little more about Filippo’s old man Sandro. Back in the eighties, he was making his entrance in the world of art, as an important member of the neo-expressionistic movement Transavanguardia. While doing so, he bought the castello in Montalcino to use it as a house and as an atelier. He decided to fully restore it.
At that time, Montalcino was not considered a good part of Italy for making wine. The slopes are not fully in the sun, and the temperature is also lower than in the rest of the region.
Right now this is exactly what makes the Brunello’s of Romitorio relatively elegant and fresh.
Castello Romitorio Brunello di Montalcino
The Castello Romitorio Brunello di Montalcino is the flagship wine and reflects more than thirty years of working in harmony with nature in Montalcino. The label is showing a Centaur (a mythical creature) in a room filled with objects and shapes. A golden rope holds everything together, representing the harmony of the composition of the wine. These wines go for around €65 in the Netherlands.
The wine matures in oak for 24 months and is aged in the cellar for over 4 months. This creates a remarkable wine, much like a masterpiece painting.
Filo di Seta Brunello di Montalcino
The name of this wine, Filo di Seta, literally translates into ‘silk-thread‘. As you can imagine this is a direct reference to how silky this wine is. The painting on it is from the early 1980’s. The name is quite a difficult one: ‘In acqua strana e cupa, se brilla un punto bianco, se salta una pupa, al volo suo m’affianco’. It is a permanent piece in the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum collection. These wines sell for around €110 in the Netherlands.
This wine is undergoes malolactic fermentation, is then rested to separate the lees, and then will undergo the same ripening process as the flagship wine.
There is also a white wine available from this Castello, and the vineyards that produce it are so called ‘micro-plots‘. The grapes are brought to the perfect ripeness, and then processed separately from fermentation to aging.
It is a mix of Chardonnay and Trebbiano. The juice is slowly macerated on the skins before gentle pressing and cooling. After settling, the fermentation process starts. The wine rests on the lees and then undergoes some bottle aging in the cellar.
The watercolor on the label of Metafisica was painted by Sandro Chia in 2020 specifically for this wine. The piece was created to resemble the universe, which has a seemingly abstract relationship to space and time when compared to time on Earth.
This wine is a perfectly balanced Super Tuscan that is rich in minerality and freshness, and surprisingly vibrant. These wines sell for around €60 in the Netherlands.
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Source: https://www.castelloromitorio.com/default.aspx
