THE WINEMAKER FILES // Giovanni Battista d’Orsi

Fattoria Casaloste, Chianti

My wife Emilia and I are both from Naples. With a degree in agriculture and oenology, I’d always wanted to set up my own business. We fell in love with Tuscany during a holiday in the summer of 1992 and I immediately knew this was the place to start Casaloste, as well as raise my family. We signed the contract in December, starting the renovation of the house as well as the cellars at the beginning of 1993, managing our first harvest that September.

Our motto is “essere piccoli per fare grandi vini” – be small to make great wines. When we started, we had just seven hectares. Today we have 10. We have consciously decided not to become bigger than that; it allows us to control, manage and check every process and make sure each bottle is a full and true expression of our style and philosophy.

Being so close to the production process enables us to decide vintage by vintage what is the best approach This sometimes means skipping vintages, harvesting later or giving the wines longer in bottle prior to release. It also means having an interesting space for creativity.

Being organic was a must from day one.

Following my studies, I knew the long-term impact of pesticides and chemicals not only on the vine but on the soil, plus I believed there was a chance to obtain high-quality

Casaloste Inversus

RRP £60 wines from a fully organic method –something unthinkable in the early 90s.

IGT Toscana. A Super Tuscan, made with 90% Merlot. Deep purple coloured, the nose shows hints of raisins, with blackberry, liquorice and just a hint of tar. The palate is fairly full bodied, full of rich fruit and hints of Christmas spices and laden with rich, velvety tannins.

For all our wines, including all the three different tiers of Chianti Classico, the ageing time is longer than usual. Our Chianti Classico is usually released to the market up to two-and-a-half years after the harvest, compared to the one year required, the Riserva up to three-and-a-half years and the Grand Selezione up to fourand-a-half years. This applies also to the IGTs, Don Vincenzo and Inversus, aged for a minimum of five or six years. We believe our wines need extra time to express all their potential and to keep evolving.

2023 is an important year for Casaloste, not only because we are celebrating the 30th harvest but also because our daughter Maria-Giovanna has decided to come back from London and officially join the business. So a second generation will be able to continue the work done so far, working closely to the same principles, but bringing a new perspective.

For our 25th harvest, we organised a vertical tasting of Chianti Classico

Casaloste Don Vincenzo

RRP £60

IGT Toscana. A single-vineyard Sangiovese, only made in the best years. The rich nose shows notes of deep berries, plum, balsamic and spicy notes, along with sweet tobacco, cocoa and toasted coffee. The palate is powerful and elegant with a dense tannic structure and fine acidity balance the sweet fruit.

Casaloste is based in Panzano in the heart of Chianti Classico. It’s a family business celebrating its 30th anniversary, which embraced organic principles and sustainable practices from the very start.

Trade

Annata from 1993 to 2015 at Jeroboams’ Walton Street Shop. While I was tasting, I could recall the key characteristic of every single vintage: the choices I made, and what I was thinking. It was incredible to see how the wines, even the 1993, still had so much to offer. I could see the evolution I always aim for when I make my wines; everything on one table.

Potentially my perfect wine will be always the one of next year. I will always keep looking for new experimentation, facing and finding new angles of all the different variables and dynamics and changes of every vintage, looking to raise the bar every year.

Casaloste Chianti Classico

RRP £22.95

Rich ruby colour with a nose of black cherry and spice. Fermented on 10% Merlot skins, giving an intense, medium bodied palate, with ripe red and black fruits balanced by fine acidity and full, ripe tannins. Very long and elegant.

Umbria

Lungarotti Rubesco Riserva Vigna Monticchio 2018 (Eurowines)

Overshadowed as both tourist draw and wine region by neighbouring Tuscany, Umbria has an off-the-beaten-track quality that makes it rather a good candidate for the hand-selling environment of the independent wine merchant. Certainly, Lungarotti’s suave, deep, savoury expression of Sangiovese, with its classic sour cherry, oregano and balsamic character, is more than capable of going head to head with wines from the starrier appellations to the east.

Marche

Umani Ronchi Casal di Serra Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi (Berkmann)

Is there a more consistently good value dry white than Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi?

For anyone combing the supermarkets looking for something acceptable and characterful at under £10 (even under £8) the wines of this undervalued Marche DO are often a godsend. In independents, too, they provide abundant character and foodfriendliness at very fair prices. One of the region’s larger producers, Umani Ronchi, is typically reliable, its Casal di Serra a softly rendered combination of fresh peach, subtle honey and almond, and graceful acidity.

Lazio

Castel de Paolis, Frascati Superiore

2019 (Hallgarten & Novum Wines)

Another Italian classic that is sadly familiar to most wine drinkers as an anaemic fixture on the faded type-written wine lists of down-at-heel trattoria, Frascati is in the midst of a modern reinvention that aims to restore its reputation as a fine-wine region. The conditions are certainly ripe: Frascati’s volcanic soils and mix of local varieties (Malvasia del Lazio, Trebbiano Giallo, Bellone and Bombino Bianco in this case) are capable of combining for wines of real energy and mineral drive, especially when harnessed by quality producers such as the Santerelli family of Castel de Paolis.

Myself, my sister Luisa and my two cousins Gianni and Paolo are the third generation of the family running this business. My father Domenico still works here every day. Gianni is our winemaker.

The heel of the Italian boot is Salento. It is a small peninsula between the Adriatic and the Ionian seas. Our daily winds are very important: they give us cool summer nights, which is crucial to the freshness of the grapes. The soil is mostly calcareous and this helps to retain water which is becoming extremely important due to climate change and the high temperatures we have in summer. These factors have a very recognisable effect on the wines.

I think that Negroamaro and Verdeca are the most interesting varieties in my region. Negroamaro is very versatile, mainly because of its acidity and high tannins. It has a natural aptitude to produce excellent rosé wines, elegant and clean red wines and it is also very interesting for the production of spumante. Although Negroamaro is already established in many markets, I think there is still a lot to do to show consumers the real potential of this marvellous grape. Verdeca is a white grape that brings freshness and crispness, combining a nice mouthwatering acidity with citrus and stone fruit flavours. I notice a growing interest in this grape.

In 1993 my uncle Augusto launched a barrique-fermented and aged Chardonnay, which was a new departure for our family. He was a pioneer in the region and we achieved incredible results, even abroad, by winning White Wine of the Year at the International Wine Challenge in 1996 and 2000. In recent times the launch of a late-harvest barrique-fermented Chardonnay under the brand Teresa Manara (our grandmother’s name) has strengthened our image as a white wine producer.

Chardonnay, as you can see, plays a very important role in our production. We of course invest in native white grapes like Verdeca and Malvasia Bianca – but Chardonnay, frankly speaking, has a bigger role. The main reason is the great ability of this grape to adapt to any type of land and climate, always managing to show something unique and different in the wines. At our latitude we get a very ripe, tropical fruit taste, supported by a very good acidity. Chardonnay is still a comfortzone wine but it also has the ability to amaze with its different nuances according to the production area.

We have a solar panel system on the roof of the winery and we are now investing to make it bigger so we can produce the majority of the energy we need. We carefully select the raw materials that we use (light bottles, eco-sustainable and fully recyclable synthetic corks) in order to reduce their impact on the environment. We embrace “integrated farming,” a method that employs organic techniques to combat pests and vine disease. Only in cases of absolute need is any other approach taken. Approximately 90% of our production is organic. We all know this is very important and we will keep investing in this direction.

Expanding our vineyards is a target, for sure, and we are investing in this project. We are also focused on our markets; this will eventually lead to changes and to new wines in the assortment. Every choice we make will aim to protect our 40-year history and to grow our business.

Italian winemaking is finally being recognised as some of the most dynamic