a little under the Radda - World Wine Consultants SA

Italy in the 1970’s had important winemakers making useful and big changes to the Italian wine scene. Going from the plonkish wines we where all once used to quaffing down, to now making seriously big & great reds, all highly sort after both in the Piedmont and from Tuscany. The likes of Angelo Gaja, Franco Biondi-Santi, Renato Ratti, Mario Schiopetto and Sergio Manetti were present and starting back then to change the wine approach in Italy for the better and for the good.

In 1967 Sergio Manetti boughtan old house in Radda in Chianti with a surrounding piece of land, a place called Montevertine. A peaceful corner of the Tuscan countryside, between Siena and Florence, for the Manetti family to use as a holiday home. He started the restauration of the house and, with the help of Bruno Bini who lived and managed the property, they planted 2 hectares of vineyard that became known as “Le Pergole Torte” (or “twisted pergolas” in local slang to describe the knottyness of the vineyard).

Helped by Sergio’s local friend Giulio Gambelli, also the consultant wine maker to Gianfranco Soldera, they started to produce a small amount of wine for friends and family only. Sergio was not really so interested to dedicate all of his time at that moment to making wine, but his friend Giulio persisted in helping him to carry on and keep making the wine from this Montevertine plot.

In 1971 they released their first ‘labelled’ vintage, and Sergio decided to send some bottles to be judged at Vinitaly the big Italian wine fest! up there in Verona. It was of course a success! At that point, Sergio then felt like he was actually doing something special in the wine world, so he decided to leave his family business and produce wine only at the farm.

With the help of another local wine friend, Bruno, who had been looking after with great detail for many years both the wine cellar and the vineyard at Montevertine. With his help they planted more vines around the house and started to experiment a bit and blend. 18 hectares later, with 9 parcels of Sangiovese (negro), some Colorino/Canaiolo all harvested by hand and fermented in traditional Tuscan cement vats. The juice is still gravity fed and all the wines are Non or Un-Filtered.

Tuscany, as you know dear reader, is the home place of Sangiovese (negro), and Radda in Chianti gives such particular characteristics to this grape variety that they did not want to compromise it, so they decided the wine produced from their first vineyard planted had to be 100% Sangiovese (negro) and not to be blended with the Trebbiano Bianco, as the local wine law dictated by Consorzio del Chianti Classico. To cut a long story very short, Sergio lost his ‘appellation’ Chianti status and was deemed to label his wine from then on as Vino da Tavola (‘table wine’). In those days one could consider this is as a ‘put-down’. Today however, these wines are classisfied as IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) along with some other now famous wines that lead the Italian ‘Super Tuscan’ IGT revolution (Soldera, Sassicaia, Solaia etc). Sergio was now of course in very good company with his Montevertine wines. They did not know it at the time but this declassification was a real bonus for all, and kept on going along with his friends, producing and experimenting on their own, free of any Consorzio classification status. The wines kept receiving very high ratings and Awards, both locally and worldwide, like no other wine from the Chianti Classico region had done before.

Manetti wanted to craft pure and traditional expressions of this cool site in Radda. The first vines where planted there in 1968 and in 1990 the American wine taster Robert Parker Jnr fell in love with the 1990 Le Pergole Torte Riserva and gave the wine 100/100 points. This was only the second time an Italian wine had received a perfect score. 1985 Sassicaia from Tenuta San Guido being the first 100/100 point wine from Italy.

In 2025, Azienda Agricola Montevertine still produces two big wines. Le Pergole Torte, the property’s flagship wine, and while it was a single-vineyard wine until the late 1980s, it developed into a top selection of the estate’s best Sangiovese grapes. The wine is aged for 12 months in large Slavonian casks, then an additional 12 months in French oak. Montevertine is the first wine the estate made, and was the wine they sent to Vinitaly for the competiton, and is essentially a traditional Chianti Classico (and of course labelled as such prior to 1982). It is made with 90% Sangiovese and 10% Colorino/Canaiolo, aged for two years in old Slavonian oak. Le Pergole Torte is only made when conditions allow, or optimum, hence no wine was produced in 1984, 1989, 1991, 2002 or 2005. However, in the 1989 and 1991 vintage there was a brilliant decision to make a declassified Le Pergole Torte using only the juice that would have gone into the Pergole mix. As rare as hen’s teeth! Needless to say, both are outstanding. We tried both at one of our 40th birthday dinners recently, and the tasting notes are here for you:

Azienda Agricola Montevertine, Radda in Chianti

Ottantanove 1989

Sweet and mature red fruits with a touch of pipe tobacco. Massive amount of complexity and huge well balanced acidity. An amazing wine! – 2 bottles in stock @ GB£695bt/ib

Azienda Agricola Montevertine, Radda in Chianti

Novantuno 1991

A mix of spice and orange peel, tobacco and sweet red cherry. What a lovely wine!– 2 bottles in stock @ GB£595bt/ib

One should also point out that they made a Montevertine Riserva in some special vintages. There was also a wine that I loved and first came across from the 1985 vintage called Il Sodaccio (Montevertine), a wine made in 1981 and 1982 only for Giorgio Pinchiorri, owner of Enoteca Pinchiorri, a three-star restaurant in Florence. The last vintage of Riserva was 1998, when the eponymous vineyard was ripped out having suffered from a vine root bug. Alas, Sergio Manetti passed away in 2000, and his son Martino Manetti took over the running of the estate. He works with the late Giulio Gambelli’s protégé Paolo Salvi to make the wines at Montevertine, which are as impressive as ever and now of course extremely collectable. Martino has pretty much left things untouched at the estate, even down to his father’s office and library which are both still cleaned and tidied daily, as if Sergio was still alive. His spirit lives on in the wine.

In stock today, ex LCB VT we have:

2 HUGE (6ltr bottles) of 2014 Le Pergole Torte Montevertine in OWCs @ GB£1.950 each/ib

1 Double Magnum (3ltr bottle) of 2010 Le Pergole Torte in OWC @ GB£1.800 each/ib

1 Double Magnum (3ltr bottle) of 2006 Le Pergole Torte in OWC @ GB£1.400 each/ib

2 Magnums (1.5ltrs) of 2006 Le Pergole Torte @ GB£850 each/ib

1 Double Magnum (3ltr bottle) of 1990 Le Pergole Torte @ GB£2.950 each/ib

1 bottle (75cl) of 1990 Le Pergole Torte Riserva @ GB£1.350 each/ib
1 bottle (75cl) of 1990 Montevertine Riserva @ GB£395 each/ib
1 bottle (75cl) of 1985 Il Sodaccio de Montevertine @ GB£695 each/ib

All the label artwork at Montevertine has always been done by artist Alfredo Manfredi (another good Sergio friend), until he cooled.

In 1992 I bought a 1990 (6ltr bottle) of Pergole Torte Riserva from Montevertine to celebrate the birth of my first child. On his 21st birthday I would hand him the bottle and a photograph of himself next to the bottle as a baby. When I opened the wooden case, next to the bottle was an envelope and inside was a large print of the 1990 label (31/55) and a note to me from Manfredi. What a lovely detail. If you need to ask anything about Azienda Agricola Montervertine, or even order some wine, then please do get in touch with me here: William@worldwineconsultants.com

Buenos Aires, March 2025