Dodo

My first vineyard was planted in 2004 in a small plot in the Chio Valley, near my future cellar, at an elevation of 300 mt. (984 feet) on a soil made up almost entirely of clay.

Having always lived in Tuscany, I chose to plant Sangiovese grapes, thinking of throwing down a challenge to all those others that through the years had been bewitched by more international grapes. And being in love with southern Mediterranean vineyards, I chose to train the wines in free-standing trees with a septence (from the latin septunx) planting pattern.

A septence pattern means that the vines are planted at the vertices of adjacent equilateral triangles. The plant density is of 10000 vines per hectare (1 ectare = 2.5 acres ca.).

With this system the roots are forced to go deep, therefore finding more water, but also curbing the quantities of grape produced. Obviously, the ground and the vines are worked strictly by hand.

From this vineyard I make the DODO wine. A red which after the fermentation by native yeast inside a wooden vat, is transferred to neutral oak barrels for at least a year, and then aged for a further year in concrete vats. The bottling, then, is carried out, using micro-amounts of Sulphur dioxide.

Dodo, thanks to the loamy soil of its vineyard, is characterized by a significant body, although never too heavy. Other valuable traits of this wine are its intensity and potential for long ageing - a purebred Sangiovese.