Read our Journal
July 2025
A Breeze from San Polino
A Note from the Sitting Room
Dearest Friends of San Polino,
We are sitting here in our sitting room, in front of a fan. It’s 6pm and still whoppingly hot outside. The chirpings of crickets and cicadas are wafting in through the open doors together with the first freshness of an early evening breeze. In a while Gigi will venture out to water the vegetable garden.
We are eating from it these days: kale, cucumbers, early tomatoes, copious amounts of zucchini and plump lettuces.
Today we had homemade gazpacho for lunch, really easy, tasty and deliciously refreshing.
Into the mixer went a cucumber, 6 big tomatoes, a few stalks of celery, half a bell pepper, half a fresh onion, a clove of garlic, salt, pepper and half a glass of vinegar. While the blender was whizzing, Giulio made some croutons in the air-fryer: bread cut up into cubes and coated with olive oil.
Regeneration Around the World
Just a little over a week, ago Katia got back from a whirlwind trip to New Zealand. She had been invited to speak at the Organic and Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference on two topics related to regenerative viticulture and our experiences at San Polino. The titles had been given to her:
1) Rooted in Change: Cultivating a New Legacy in Organic Viticulture
2) The Living Vineyard: Vitiforestry, Mycelium Networks and an Awareness of Vine Consciousness
Exciting subjects indeed. The conference was amazing, and Katia learnt so much through the talks, which ranged from the hard science of soil and water management to themes such as hers. An extraordinary time in an extraordinary country. It’s fabulous to know that in all corners of the world so many people in key positions are working at finding solutions to some of the more pressing issues of our times.
Summer in the Vineyard
Here in Montalcino it is now very hot, temperatures were up to 36°C last week, although the forecasts predict a fall to more reasonable weather this week. The vines don’t much like it too hot, but they are bearing up well, particularly important as we do not irrigate our vineyards. Irrigation is not allowed, and in any case most disapproved of, as Brunello has been created to reflect its terroir. Feeding the vines water would change all their character and the wines would be much less interesting.
Work continues in the vineyards; the grapes are growing and these days our job is to separate the clusters so that none of them are touching, or crowding each other out. We want each cluster to be free falling. We are training the plants so that the vine leaves fall just delicately over the clusters, to protect them from UV rays or hail, should we be unlucky. So we walk through the vineyards, moving the vines around one by one, to give them the most perfect form for the development of the best grapes. It’s a lot of work but bears the results that we need for our wines.
This year is looking good. We had a lot of rainfall in May and early June which replenished the soils.
By the end of July the grapes will start to change colour. By mid-August they will be purple and then it will be a question of crossing our fingers as we do the countdown to harvest, which is usually in the last week of September, or early October.
Wines in Progress
In the meantime, between now and then, we will bottle our Brunello di Montalcino 2021, to be presented to the public in January next year. We are working on it now, with lots of tasting sessions, thoughts and conversations. It’s an exciting moment.
And a small piece of good news to share:
We are quietly proud to have just been awarded Gold at the 2025 Sommelier Wine Awards (SWA) for our Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2019.
Italian Summer Thing
And we will all take time to fit in some holiday: Italian summers. Sea, shorts, aperitivi, long cool evenings. A touch of la dolce vita.
We wish you a wonderful summer and will get back in touch before harvest to keep you up to date with the most critical time in the San Polino calendar!!!!!
Thank you for reading, and many warm regards from the San Polino Team
Gigi, Katia, Daniel, Shani, Giulio, Avni, Mariano and Tini
October 2024
Schrödinger's Harvest
You know the paradox of Schrödinger’s Cat? Simply put, if you place a cat with something that could kill it inside a sealed box, the cat could be said to be in a “Superposition” of both dead and alive at one and the same time until the box is opened and measurement taken.
So it was for us this summer, our grapes fantastic one day and catastrophic the next: climate chaos in action from May to October kept us on an emotionally draining roller coaster of hope, delusion, euphoria, despair, or wild excitement all following the weather patterns and forecasts of the day.
On the morning of October 2nd we marched into the vineyard with secateurs, boxes and determination to gather in one of the most extra-ordinary harvests of our experience, finishing on the 16th with menacing clouds chasing us for the last boxes.
In the winery the new wines are in 22 still bubbling vats, each carefully labeled and numbered with day of harvest, specific part of specific vineyard, and fermentation history. Like patients in some fancy well-governed hospital. Temperatures taken twice a day, kept clean and neat, records kept. All in the name of great wines.
Today we went to the lab with samples of the first 9 vats we filled, thus those first to finish fermentation. A further Superposition will be put to rest once we have the measurement of their analyses in hand. We hope to hear that the San Polino Harvest 2024 is gloriously alive, that Schrödinger’s cat is jumping out of the box, vigorous and strong.
Further details:
The winter was mild and bud break came 2 weeks later than usual with a rainy , cool spring and early summer.
While July and August were marked by periods of intense heat, some days above 40°C in the vineyards, September saw rain and a constant threat of hail. As the month progressed, contrary to our expectations that the summer heat would have provoked swift ripening, our sugar readings for the grapes showed extremely slow maturation.
Presumably in the heat of July and August the vines had become dormant, as self-defense closing their pores to the excessive sunlight.
In late-September we waited with baited breath fearing that forecasted storms would spoil the grapes. We sprayed the vines with mold eating bacterial concoctions which kept them beautifully healthy and intact.
In spite of predictions of further rain, we kept our nerve and decided to delay harvest until the grapes were at their best. The time was right on the 2nd October when we walked into the fields with secateurs and boxes.
We harvested intermittently vineyard plot by plo according to grape ripeness, characteristic, and rain. We worked meticulously and hard, with many people in the vineyards and around the clock in the winery.
During our tense 10 day wait for harvest grape maturation had galloped and by the time we finally finished on 16th October we had brought in an abundant, beautiful and healthy crop.
Assessing the situation we feel that any success we had was mainly due to painstaking work, all by hand, in the vineyards and meticulous harvesting practices. Every week of the summer months had seen difficult decisions to be made in the vineyards: when to act and when to wait, each choice analyzed with patience and the experience of what our terroir can offer.
So right now we are thrilled that we managed our work in such a unique and complicated year.
By meeting nature halfway, in following its wild course with sensitivity and respect, we found a model for mutual advantage in the vineyards and winery. The San Polino Harvest 2024 has been the year of regenerative viticulture in action.
This summer Nature exploded in frenzied abundance in and around the vineyards, with unlimited profusions of insects, flowers, fauna, reptiles, mushrooms, bats, birds, fruit, heat, rain, beauty.
And in the face of all that is happening in the world, let it continue.
The new wines are still sitting with their skins in the winery. We are preparing for the press and planning the order of which barrels to start on first.
