It took more than 1000 years to identify in Tuscany the viticultural traces of religious pilgrims hiking from Spain to Rome to visit the Pope. Today you can drink a bottle of wine that would not exist without those pilgrims.
It nearly didn't exist, though. The village of San Miniato made cheap Chianti from the Spanish grapes for centuries without knowing what they were, and without caring either, because in low-end wine all the grapes were fermented together.
Sangiovese dominated – it's Tuscany – but another variety that the locals called "X" went in the vat and was barely noticeable in the mix.
That's one of Tempranillo's characteristics, as we have learned in the 21st Century. Tempranillo plays second-fiddle when blended with Cabernet or Merlot, as increasingly happens in southern Spain today. Though it is by far the most important grape in Spain, Tempranillo needs to be on its own to be appreciated.
Though it has grown there for centuries, Tempranillo might not have kept its tiny foothold in Tuscan wine if not for Leonardo Beconcini. And the irony is he found it while looking for the best clones of Sangiovese. A different, less-curious vigneron might have just grafted the X vines to Sangiovese, especially because the X vines on his farm were old and, therefore, producing a small crop. But Beconcini knew that was what made them interesting.
"We have ungrafted, pre-phylloxera Tempranillo vines on our property," Beconcini told Wine-Searcher. "It's a very particular present from our land."
Listen up, pilgrim
San Miniato was a key stop on the "Via Francigena", a road that pilgrims took through France from England to the north and Spain to the west. It sits at the intersection of the Florence-Pisa and Lucca-Siena roads, and was an important trading post for centuries. That's probably how the Tempranillo got there.
"San Miniato was a very important town on this route," Beconcini said. "We think a community of people started this particular growing with the Tempranillo seeds. They couldn't carry the vines all that way so they would carry the seeds. We are not sure for this, but it is the most logical."
Unfortunately, San Miniato's economic peak may have been during the pilgrimage era. Wine-wise, it is on the wrong side of Florence, to the west about halfway to the Ligurian Sea. When the Grand Duke of Tuscany issued an edict in 1716 about who could produce Chianti, San Miniato and its neighbors were left out. More than 200 years later, the Grand Duke's preferred villages south and east of Florence formed the basis of Chianti Classico.
Italy being Italy, that didn't stop anyone from making Chianti: laws gradually loosened to allow Chianti production over an enormous swath of Tuscany. But the fortunes of Chianti Classico and greater Chianti have diverged; it's hard to make a living now making Chianti because Italians won't pay much for it.
Beconcini's grandfather Pietro was a sharecropper in San Miniato, but he managed to save up enough money to buy the land he worked as a typical Italian farm with vegetables, olive trees, animals and of course grapevines.
"In the past, the first goal was to obtain food for the family, and after sell a part," Beconcini said.
Beconcini's father changed the focus of the farm to just making wine, but he was making cheap jug wine like all the other farmers in the non-heralded parts of greater Chianti.
"My father make just one kind of wine, just simple Chianti," Beconcini said. "For all the life, my father, one wine."
In 1990, Leonardo Beconcini took over the farm at age 26. He has good soils and knew it: white clay with fossil shells. And he had the old vines. But he clashed with his father right away.
"I wanted to use Sangiovese from San Miniato for obtain better wine," Beconcini said. "San Miniato is not Montalcino, Greve in Chianti, Bolgheri or another famous land in Tuscany. In San Miniato, I am the first winemaker to try to start make wine at a more high level. They have not experience in San Miniato. In the past I traveled in France, I see the farmer who has the winery. I see the farmer make wine. My family was very different. They want to stop me. But it was very very important in the '90s. We needed to develop. The mass production was finished for a small farm. Consumers drink less wine but more important wine. Our clients asked us for another kind of wine. I am young but I travel and I see around the world. My family, no."
Learning the hard way
One of the first things he did was start a research project with University of Florence to identify the best Sangiovese on his land. He was also curious about the X vine, and he had a lot of it, but until DNA testing in 2004, he didn't know what it was. Once he learned its identity, Beconcini traveled to Spain to learn more about Tempranillo. One thing he discovered is that he didn't like most of the Spanish wines made from it.
"Learning is very difficult for us," Beconicini said. "The winemaker in Spain is working in a very different style than in Tuscany. For us, it's very important the freshness, the balance. The wine going with food. We want to have a more food wine than the wine in Spain. In Spain, the grape is the same, the vine is the same, but there's a different method. Tempranillo vines can obtain very high sugar content, and very high concentration. I travel in Spain for understand the vines, but we want to make a Tuscan wine."
In that, he has succeeded. The most remarkable thing about Pietro Beconcini IXE Toscana Tempranillo is the freshness. You won't taste many Spanish Tempranillos with this much acidity. It has nice red plum fruit, but I felt in drinking the 2016 this summer that I was robbing the cradle.
"We make harvest in the balance moment, when we have a good quantity of sugar, but still acidity," Beconcini said. "We make vinification with long maceration on the skins. No fast vinification. Our project is for obtain spices, colors, freshness from the grapes and freshness and minerality from our soil. It's possible to drink also new but for our style it's okay to age. The tannins are very present and the acidity is very high. We want to make a Tuscan Tempranillo."
Today the Pietro Beconcini winery makes about 9000 cases of wine a year and Tempranillo is fully 30 percent of that, making it a very unique Tuscan winery.
In 2018, Beconcini joined the consortium of the Terre di Pisa appellation. Because generic Chianti fetches such a low price, he had been simply calling his wines Wine of Tuscany.
"For me the Terre di Pisa DOC is very important for promote the location," Beconcini said. "Because our Sangiovese is not the same as the Chianti Classico, but the soil makes it possible to make a different Sangiovese but very recognized."
But he won't be able to call his Tempranillo wine Terre di Pisa, because it's not an Italian grape. However, bear with me now for wine grape variety geekiness.
Beconcini makes a very interesting wine called Maurleo that is 50 percent Sangiovese and 50 percent Malvasia Nera. It's the most interesting wine I've tasted in his portfolio, with an intense character of cherry, tobacco and a hint of jackfruit. The tropical note of jackfruit must come from the Malvasia Nera because I've never tasted it in Sangiovese or in Tempranillo, and Malvasia grapes are known for being aromatic. That said, wine geneticist José Vouillamoz claims in the book Wine Grapes that in Tuscany "a few old vines of the Spanish variety Tempranillo have been found under the misleading name Malvasia Nera".
I'm not a geneticist so I can't resolve that conflict, but I can report that because Malvasia Nera is considered a native grape while Tempranillo is not, Beconcini can and will label Maurleo as a Terre di Pisa Rosso DOC wine from the 2018 vintage.
"It's a combination very traditional in our land," Beconcini said. "A lot of years ago when I project this wine, I study our terroir and I see a very important percentage in our vineyards of Malvasia Nera. I try together with Sangiovese. I search for a good companion for Sangiovese for make my second wine. I think a soft grape, more enjoyable, more simple grape. In my winery, I don't use international grapes. Never. I haven't Cabernet, Syrah or so on."
But he does have Tempranillo. And that's a tale as old as the pilgrims.
September 13, 2020 at 07:05AM
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