The brilliance of Brancaia

pink wines, this one has a bit of personality about it.

Il Bianco 2022, Organic Brancaia’s only white wine is a Sauvignon Blanc, from vines in Castellina in Chianti. “We keep the skins in contact with the juice for 12 to 24 hours, then there’s a slow fermentation at low temperature, with no malolactic to keep the acidity as high as possible,” says Barbara.

“Afterwards the wine will stay for five months on the lees, with bâtonnage once a week. One third is in used oak. We don’t want to have wood flavours; we just want to have some micro-oxidation.

“The wine definitely evolves in the bottle. If you keep it in your cellar, you will see a beautiful evolution, but you can definitely drink it now.”

Tre 2021, Organic

A blend of Sangiovese (70%) Merlot (15%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (15%). Two thirds of the grapes come from the coast and a third from the Chianti Classico region.

“We don’t really have specific blocks to produce grapes for Tre,” says Barbara. “We believe that each block has the potential to end up in our top wines, and we do everything with every single block to achieve the best possible result.

“Working this way means I’m never obliged to make a compromise on my top wines and can also offer a pretty cool entry-level wine.

“The silkiness comes from the grapes from the coast and then we have freshness and acidity from the Chianti Classico region, which I think makes this wine very easy to enjoy with or without food.

“I like to say it’s easy, but not simple; there’s character, it’s structured. It’s serious red wine without being complicated.”

Chianti Classico 2021, Organic

The fruit comes from the south-facing Brancaia vineyards at an altitude of 230m and the similarly exposed Poppi vineyard 400m above sea level.

“It’s a pure Sangiovese which ages for 12 months in stainless steel and in concrete,” Barbara says. “So no oak, very fresh, bright, clean and straightforward. I like to call this wine the naked Sangiovese, because it's all about the fruit. Like all our red wines, it goes through spontaneous fermentation.”

N°2 2021, Organic

This pure Cabernet Sauvignon, with its silky tannins and blackberry and plum notes, shows just what the variety is capable of on the Maremma coast. There’s no problem getting Cab to ripen in these parts. But Brancaia favours restraint over richness.

“The freshness is very important to me,” says Barbara. “I always need acidity. In this region I’m extremely careful about not missing the perfect picking time. In Chianti Classico you can pick one, two or three days late and it won’t have a huge impact on the acidity. That’s not true in the Maremma. We’re always the first estate picking grapes and everybody used to laugh at us. Probably not anymore.”

Few would dispute the idea that climate change has played an outsized role in the rise of English and Welsh wine over the past few decades.

According to an extensive 2022 report co-authored by a team of University of East Anglia academics and weather forecasting firm Weatherquest, temperatures during the growing season in south east England have gone up by 1°C since 1980, and that rise has “supported much more reliable yield and quality” of, most notably, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

For all the increase in reliability and quality, however – and for all that they’re likely to improve still further as temperatures rise by another 1.4°C by 2040 – the UK remains at the northern limits of wine production, which means coping with vintage variability is very much part of life for wine producers.

The past two vintages are perfect cases in point. 2021 was an immensely challenging year for English and Welsh winemakers, with a much cooler, wetter growing season than the previous three years, and considerably fewer sunshine hours. Frost and, particularly, rot (rampant downy mildew) caused widespread problems; yields were low – in some cases vanishingly so – and sufficient ripeness, certainly for still wines, proved elusive.

2022 could not have been more different. It was a year that saw days of immense heat (including the highest-ever temperature recorded in the UK) during a long, warm, sunny growing season in which disease pressure remained at a minimum. Harvests advanced by as much as three weeks on the average.

While some growers reported smaller crops, with the heat reducing bunch and berry sizes by as much as 30% in some warmer areas, in general this was very much a bumper year, with 12.2 million bottles produced, according to Wine GB, versus the 9 million of 2021.

In his excellent, detailed report on the vintage published by English and Welsh specialist wine retailer Grape Britannia, Felix Robertson quotes the team at Martin’s Lane, in Essex, who offered a line that summed up the positive vibes around the vintage. “2022 fulfils all we would ever ask in this country […] to grow grapes comparable with any international standard.”

But Robertson also sounds a note of caution. “It would be remiss not to consider the extraordinary summer