De Vinosalvo

De Vinosalvo is a small vintner producing hand-crafted wines from selected parcels of fruit grown in its own vineyards near Cinigiano in the Tuscan Maremma. With an australo-italian emigrée as their winemaker and chief dreamer, it’s only natural that they grow Shiraz (but also Sangiovese) as the basis for great Mediterranean reds. A fitting symbol of their company philosophy is the name they have borrowed from a fundamental figure in the history of oenology: GALFRIDUS DE VINOSALVO.  A mediaeval writer and sage who was born in England and worked and travelled widely in Europe, Galfridus researched the agricultural writings of the ancient world and authored the first printed volume on winemaking - De vino et vitibus conservandis - thus earning himself the moniker de Vinosalvo.

Their winemaking practices are simple, yet knowledge-intensive. They craft our wines to express the variety, the vineyard and the season, and some natural variation among years is normal. Elegance and intensity of character, on the other hand, are the constants in their wines. Shiraz and Sangiovese ripen at different times and are fermented separately. The grapes are hand-picked; then de-stemming and crushing is followed by fermentation at controlled temperature with the use of pumping over, punching down of the cap and occasional rack-and-return until dryness to manage extraction of colour and phenolics. After draining and light basket pressing, the wine is matured in well-seasoned French oak puncheons: this practice promotes the evolution of secondary flavours and aromas while keeping the fruit forward and the wood in its place. The finished wines are clarified by traditional fining methods and bottled to mature for a further 4-6 months before release.