**This is a pre-sale, meaning we don’t yet have the wines in our hands, but will get them out to you as soon as we do. There’s no limits or restrictions on this round-up so have at it! But, as usual, all orders are to be placed online only.
No phone calls, DMs, emails or holds! Play nice!**
Can you be a protagonist in a story that hasn’t been written? In 1985, when chemist-cum-mathematician Fabrizio Niccolaini and his wife Patricia Bartolini founded Massa Vecchia in southwestern Tuscany, natural wine wasn’t even “A Thing”. Little did they know that the humble biodiverse estate they were quietly forming would serve as a model of uncompromising closed-loop agriculture and sit at the apex of the low-intervention landscape 40 years later.
Today, that estate sits across almost 25 hectares, with just 20 percent under under vine and the rest devoted to pastureland, forest and olive groves. More than an organic or biodynamic farm, the operation is perhaps better thought of as a full-blown philosophy sprung to life, and that rings true in the cellar, too, by way of long macerations, fermentation carried out in open wooden vats and no sulphur added at all. Even so, these wines are as steady and stable as they come, possessed of eye-opening depth and designed for the long haul.
Fittingly, the only white in the stable, the 2022 Ariento, is a hardcore skin-contact cuvée composed of vermentino, trebbiano and malvasia – and it’s very much offers the best of all three: stewed citrus peels, acacia blossom, dried stone fruits and warming spice with ripple and grip to burn. Equally serious, the 2022 Rosato (malvasia nero with a dash of merlot) lands at the properly dark end of rosé, layering Amarena cherries with bramble character, allspice and candied fennel seeds.
The reds, meanwhile, begin somewhat more approachably with the 2022 Rosso, a sangiovese from younger vines that almost reads like nebbiolo with its sour-sweet hits of cherries and rose petals set against a backdrop of white mushrooms, peppercorns and rocky tannins. For a more distinctly regional expression, look to the 2021 Sangiovese di Toscana, which goes all in on all the varietal hallmarks, from black cherries and olive tapenade to pipe tobacco, dried figs and wet soil. Slick, suave and shaped by contoured tannins. At the apex sits the 2021 Poggio a’Venti, a dense and mega savoury single-vineyard sangiovese with a darker, more plum-like complexion, where truffles, autumn leaves, cacao and liquorice get a blood-orange lift at the finish.
(And because we all know that winemakers always make the best olive oil, get your hands on a bottle of Massa Vecchia's Olio di Oliva – rich and intensely herbaceous with whiffs of artichokes, cut grass and a thwack of pepper to close. Epic.)