Conti Marone Cinzano Lot 1 is a new, ambitious project in Montalcino, helmed by Santiago Marone Cinzano, the 11th-generation (10th-generation) winemaker in his family. Lot 1 is a very personal wine, grounded in the biodynamically farmed parcels of Santiago’s family winery Col d’Orcia, in Montalcino. The Marone Cinzano family traces their family history back to Piedmont, near Turin, where they were producers and distillers of wine in the 16th century. The family created Cinzano brand in 1757, growing the company to a global brand through the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1989, Santiago’s grandfather, Alberto, was killed in a car accident, forcing his father, Francesco, to sell their shares in Cinzano in 1992.

Luckily, Santiago’s grandfather, Alberto, had diversified the family vineyard holdings by purchasing a 500-hectare property on the Sant’Angelo hill of Montalcino called Col d’Orcia in 1973. Francesco Marone Cinzano, Santiago’s father, married his mother, Marcella, born in New York, but whose family is from Turin, a professional photographer. They married just before the passing of Alberto, whose death in 1989 precipitated the sale of the Cinzano brand.   In 1995,  they moved to Chile with their two young children. Francesco, fascinated by fine wine production and organic viticulture, established the Erasmo winery in Chile’s Maule Valley with the help of his friend Miguel Torres. He developed Erasmo into a benchmark organic and biodynamic Chilean winery. A decade later, in 2005, Francesco returned to Italy and turned his attention to Col d’Orcia in Montalcino.  He implemented organic practices with the goal of returning to the kind of viticulture that existed before modern, mechanised agriculture, when animals and biodiversity were not marketing terms but the reality of farming in Tuscany.  After a decade of experiments and trials, he introduced biodynamic farming to Col d’Orcia in 2015.

Today, Santiago continues that tradition. This history and the vineyard area at Col d’Orcia are the basis for Santiago Marone Cinzano’s Lot 1 wine. While the vineyard area at Col d’Orcia covers more than 150 hectares of biodynamically farmed land, about 75 hectares are the top parcels, suitable for producing great Brunello di Montalcino. Within the biodynamically farmed vineyards, there are 20-25 parcels, with different expositions and elevations, from 100 to 400 meters, on the Sant’Angelo hill. In addition to the different climatic conditions, the soils on the hill vary significantly, with different proportions of clay, silt, and varying levels of limestone.     

Santiago’s objective is to select the very best parcel in any given vintage, based on the climactic conditions of the vintage, to produce a single wine, one that will express the best character in each vintage. Santiago was born in 1994 and brings a contemporary sensibility to the production of his wines. While the winemaking is rooted in tradition, Santiago has engaged renowned enologist Professor Donato Lanati, who has worked with estates like Giuseppe Mascarello and Giacomo Conterno.  Lanati helped Santiago identify the parameters he wants to use to define “the best plot” in each vintage. After identifying the plot, they adapt vinification to the style he is looking for. Santiago wants to make the kind of wines he wants to drink; wines that are elegant, with verticality and succulence, while being crunchy, acid-driven and without dense, or intense, hard tannins that require long periods of ageing. “Tannin polymerisation is key and something we think about a lot”, says Santiago. 

In the cellar, he has chosen not to adhere to the ageing regimen prescribed by DOCG law for Riserva.  Although some of his wines have met that criteria, like 2019, his first vintage, flexibility to give the wine what it needs is crucial. “In the past 10 years, we’ve seen intense climactic variability – the wettest year on record, the driest year on record, the most severe frosts, and the highest temperatures in the past 30 years,” he explains. “We’ve always had hot vintages, but now the extremes are much more accentuated”. Lot 1 is a project in which flexibility and diversity define the level of quality.