Over breakfast at a B&B in the brightly colored Tuscan hilltop town of Ghizzano, I met Olaf.
A very fit 56, Olaf explained how he had set out from his native southern Germany on his bike (and not an electric one) about a week earlier. He arrived in Italy after crossing a section of the Swiss Alps, pedaling backroads all the way.
I was awed and envious of his physical and navigational feat, for sure. But his presence in this town of only around 350 people confirmed its off-the-beaten track vibe. I, too, was traveling the backroads (by car) with a different mission: to visit fine Tuscan wineries outside the blockbuster triad of Chianti Classico, Montalcino, and Bolgheri.
I chose Ghizzano, perched in the Pisan Hills about 30 miles southeast of Pisa’s leaning tower, because of the intriguing wines and estate of Tenuta di Ghizzano. Run by Ginevra Venerosi Pesciolini, the winery is housed in her nearly 1,000-year-old castle, which over the centuries was transformed into a Renaissance country villa with cavernous brick and stone cellars.
The villa and its formal Italian garden, nestled at about 650 feet above sea level, overlook Ghizzano’s 700-plus acre dominion of mostly gentle, rolling hills. The highest sites with the best exposures are planted to about 46 acres of vineyards. Adjoining them are nearly 40 acres of olive groves. On the flatlands below are large swaths of woodlands, grain and chickpea fields and poplar groves.
Here, in the 1980s, Count Pierfrancesco Venerosi Pesciolini sold the estate wine in bulk while experimenting with its Sangiovese and introducing French varieties Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot.
In 1985, assisted by his friend Piermario Meletti Cavallari, who founded Bolgheri’s Grattamacco in 1977, the count made his Super Tuscan wine. Called Veneroso, it was a blend of about 45 percent Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
The years that followed were heady times for a new wave of Super Tuscans. Veneroso was poured at famous, high-end restaurants like the landmark Maxim’s in Paris.
“Those were the heights,” comments Ginevra, with a grin and a dramatic wave of her hand.
But inconsistent quality was an issue, she says: “From 1985 to 1993, there were only three good years.”
For her father, who was the director of a pharmaceutical lab, wine was a hobby, not his focus. The estate staff, she adds, “did not have the technical competence to manage the making and aging of wine.”
Ginevra changed all that.
In 1995, she left her job with a Florence publishing house and came to Ghizzano to aid her ailing father full time. By 2003, she’d taken control.
Over the last three decades, she has methodically revamped Ghizzano, building its 7,500-case line of wines with more bottlings of Sangiovese and indigenous varieties. Over time, she planted and replanted a vast majority of Ghizzano's vineyards while converting the estate to organic farming and then biodynamic certification.
Working with consulting enologist Carlo Ferrini, she began fermenting all of the estate wines with indigenous yeasts and eliminated the additives, such as commercial tannins and acidifiers, used by her father’s team in the winery.
“Before, the wines were good, but I had a strong desire to make our wine that reflected our grapes and our place,” says Ginevra, who, at 59, is as determined and energetic as she is unpretentious.
Defining the Terroir of the Pisa Hills
“We have our own soils and our own microclime,” she adds, referencing the Pisa area’s sandy clay and mild, Mediterranean-influenced climate. “Our wines have a particular savoriness and minerality. Our Sangiovese is more red than black.”
One of the first steps she took at Ghizzano, in the 1990s, was to shake up the Veneroso blend. She increased the percentage of Sangiovese in the wine, to the current 70 percent blended with Cabernet Sauvignon, and moved the Merlot to its own Super Tuscan bottling called Nambrot (after a family ancestor), which now also contains Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
In 2004, she expanded production by creating the estate’s baseline Il Ghizzano red from Sangiovese with a touch of Merlot. And in 2015, after planting Vermentino, Trebbiano and Malvasia Bianca, she debuted Il Ghizzano’s white blend.
But it’s her latest pair of wines, called “Mimesi,” that fully bear her imprint in pursuit of terroir. The Mimesi white and red are both single-vineyard varietal wines that are aged in amphorae made of materials she has studied through experimentation in her cellar.
The Mimesi red, launched in 2018, is a Sangiovese fermented in concrete and then aged 12 months in amphorae of cocciopesto (or opus signinum, an ancient, Roman-style concrete that is less porous than terracotta). The Mimesi white, a Vermentino that debuted with the 2020 vintage, is fermented in stainless steel tanks and aged in terracotta amphorae. Ginevra makes a little more than 400 cases of the two combined.
These wines— softer-edged, spicy and saline in their own ways—share a lot in common with the rest of Ghizzano’s wines, which are all marked by degrees of sleek suppleness that lend themselves to drinkability.
Pisa area wines are an evolving category. The Sangiovese-dominant reds can be classified as Chianti Colline Pisane DOCG; most any other white or red can be labelled Costa Toscana IGT.
Ginevra was one of the first to use the relatively new Terre di Pisa DOC appellation when it launched in 2011, starting with Ghizzano’s flagship Veneroso. Terre di Pisa, which has grown to 18 producers, nearly all farming organically, is dominated by Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah (plus Trebbiano and Vermentino for the whites). All the red wines require at least one year of barrel aging.
Unsurprisingly, she supports the Pisan appellation: “We wanted to emphasize the particularity of this area.”
A Tuscan wine consultant, with no investment in the area, recently told me he thought that the Pisan Hills would be the “next big thing” in Tuscany.
Perhaps. But for now, let’s keep it between us.
