Rosso di Montalcino Organic DOC 2018 – Donatella Cinelli Colombini

Casato Prime Donne, the first Italian winery staffed entirely by women has reached International success thanks to the quality of its Brunello. Fattoria del Colle is a treasure chest of memoirs where visitors can experience the history of the Tuscan countryside in the midst of uncontaminated and organically cultivated nature.

Donatella Cinelli Colombini left her family’s estate to start her own, made up of Casato Prime Donne in Montalcino and Fattoria del Colle in Trequanda. Together with the vineyards, and the farmhouses in need of repair Donatella received some Brunello wine, and so she needed a cellar master to rack, age and bottle it. She called the Enology school in Siena, asking for a good student to hire as her cellar master. They answered that they had none; cellar masters had to be booked, years in advance. When Donatella asked the same question, specifying however that she wanted a female cellar master, the answer changed. There were many women available, as no winery would employ them. Realising the great gap in opportunities, Donatella Cinelli Colombini developed her project finalised in reducing this discrimination and demonstrating that the production of fine wines does not depend on muscles but on the passion and the talent that both genders have in equal measure.

Rosso di Montalcino

This is Brunello’s younger brother, obtained from the same Sangiovese grapes and the same Montalcino area but destined to be consumed sooner.
Montalcino, the land where Sangiovese expresses itself best in the whole world and where wines that can last centuries are born, can also produce a great young red wine. This seems a contradiction but it’s not. It demonstrates the expertise of the grape growers in this territory. In fact the characteristics of the future wines comes from the clusters; grapes destined to become Brunello or Rosso di Montalcino are cultivated for this destiny right from birth. Poorer soils for the first and more fertile ones for the second. Less clusters for the first, slightly more for the latter. Most of all during harvest the specific characters of both must be made evident, choosing with care the harvest date and vinifying in the most delicate way.