story…

The founding of the estate dates back to the 1970’s when a German woman who moved to the area settled at what is now the Casanuova delle Cerbaie estate, where she established her own winery and vineyards. However this humble estate went almost completely unnoticed until the late 2000’s when it went up for sale and was purchased by an entrepreneur in New York, Roy Welland. Roy had come to the wine world from his time working on Wall Street in the 80’s & 90’s. During that time he fell in love with wine, particularly Burgundy and traditional Tuscan wines, and restaurants. Eventually opening a couple of successful restaurants of his own in NYC, Washington Park and Cru. Cru being the more wine driven concept and a large portion of the wine list there was from Roy’s private collection. During both of those restaurants peaks of operation is when Casanuova delle Cerbaie would come up for sale, and in 2008 Roy purchased the estate and its vineyard holdings. His restaurants have since closed sadly, but they both were highly regarded during their time of operation. But his investment in the tiny Tuscan estate in Montalcino has only become more and more well recognized throughout the wine and dining commmunity.

The vineyards and estate are located in the northwestern portion of Montalcino, commonly referred to as the Buonconvento subzone. Although the town Buonconvento isn’t actually within Montalcino region borders, so this name is somewhat confusing, it is also often just referred to as the Nordvest (northwest) subzone. With the investment and ownership in the hands of an American many would assume that with that there would be all these modern updates and a drive to produce a “modern” style of Brunello but the truth couldn’t be more the opposite. Yes there have been some modern technologies and updates to the facility but the wines are as traditional as they come.

The day to day care of the estate is left in the hands of a local Italian staff brought on by Roy. Although Roy stays up to date on the goings on and typically ensures that he is on site for a lot of the major decisions, his trusted team handles everything else on their own. Over the last few years they have put significant investment into wine tourism on the estate and through their vineyards. In classic tuscan style the estate is not only surrounded by vineyards but with a fair amount forested land and olive trees, from which they produce a limited bottling of estate olive oil.

farming & Philosophy…

All of their vineyard holdings are farmed with organic practices. All vineyard work and cellar work is carried out by hand, from pruning to harvest to sorting the fruit before fermentation. They are committed to quality, not quantity and although their vineyard holdings could easily produce around 70,0000 bottles or more of wine, but due to their targeted pruning and rigorous sorting practices keep their production closer to half that at around 35,000 bottles annually.

The cellar practices and philosophy are deeply rooted in traditional methods, although some modern technology is employed. Fermentations take place on ambient yeasts in temperature controlled tanks, with skin macerations varying depending on the vintage and bottling the fruit is destined for. Generally speaking the more prestigious the bottling, the longer it is left intact with the skins. The same can be said about the aging of the wines prior to bottling. All of their 100% Sangiovese wines are aged in large, Slavonian oak specifically from the legendary Stockinger cooperage based in Austria. They produce one bottling of wine that is not 100% Sangiovese, their Rivale, which is comprised of mostly Sangiovese along with small amounts of Merlot, Colorino, & Petit Verdot; this bottlings is actually aged in new oak for 10 months and is the only wine to see new wood.

Vineyards…

Although the estate itself is surrounded by vineyard plantings, a good portion of their holdings are spread out from the estate. In particular they have a decent amount of plots located on the very famous Montosoli hill, highly regarded for the elegance and grace it endears to the wines produced exclusively from fruit from its hillsides. Cerbaie has 15 hectares in total of vineyard holdings, less than 1 hectare of that land is planted to their Merlot & Petit Verdot. Due to their small production and the fact that they are lucky enough to have a good portion of their plots on Montosoli, there is a bit of fruit from there in all of their Brunello bottlings. They also produce and bottled a single site Montosoli, always as their Riserva bottling.

• Montosoli

  one of Montalcino’s most famous sites, located north of the town of Montalcino | the vineyards on this hill are on the northern side of the hill and have a mainly southeastern or southwestern exposure | the soils here are particularly rich in galesto soils, a unique rocky, schistous clay mixed soil found in Tuscany’s best sites, along with a fair amount of gravel | the hill top is about 350 masl but the majority of the vineyards lie between 250-300 masl

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