Natural Wine Producers: Working With Nature
Portraits and interviews with the world's finest natural wine producers — farmers and winemakers who work in harmony with terroir, minimal intervention, and a deep respect for the land.
Cosimo Maria Masini
Set in a Tuscan estate the Medici built and the Bonaparte family once owned, Cosimo Maria Masini farms biodynamically and ferments in small open basins by hand.
Pàcina
Giovanna Tiezzi and her family have stewarded Pàcina, a 10th-century monastery estate near Castelnuovo Berardenga in Tuscany, for nearly a century, producing some of Italy's most quietly radical natural Sangiovese.
Ampeleia
Born of an Alpine lunch involving Elisabetta Foradori, this Alta Maremma estate champions Cabernet Franc and Mediterranean grapes, raised entirely in cement, never wood.
Podere Casaccia
Physician-turned-vigneron Roberto Moretti and his wife Lucia Mori farm 12 biodynamic hectares outside Florence, making site-specific natural wines from rescued old Tuscan varieties on the hills of Scandicci.
Antonio Camillo
After 25 years working other people's vines, this Maremma grower went solo in 2006 to make Ciliegiolo a serious wine rather than a blending afterthought.
San Martino
Giuseppe Ferrua has farmed Fabbrica di San Martino's 20-hectare biodynamic estate outside Lucca since the early 1990s, producing five wines from 3 hectares of ancient Tuscan vines using native yeast fermentation and no additions.
Fattoria Lornano
A Chianti Classico estate owned by the same family since 1904, where fourth-generation Nicolo Pozzoli replanted the vineyards and refocused the historic Monteriggioni property on Sangiovese.
Istine
Angela Fronti turned her family's scattered high-altitude Radda and Gaiole plots into one of Chianti Classico's most precise expressions of single-vineyard Sangiovese.
Podere Còncori
Gabriele da Prato farms five hectares biodynamically in Tuscany's Garfagnana valley, coaxing Syrah, Pinot Nero, and Traminer from ancient soils between the Apuan Alps and the Apennines to make some of Italy's most surprising mountain wines.
Fornacella
A small organic Montalcino estate, Fornacella farms about 2.5 hectares of Sangiovese at 300 to 400 meters and ages its Brunello for 36 months in Slavonian oak.
Stefano Amerighi
Stefano Amerighi is Cortona's great Syrah champion: a Demeter-certified biodynamic farmer who identified his ideal hillside terroir in 2001, planted Rhone clones, and now produces wines that belong in conversation with the finest expressions of the variety anywhere in the world.
Podere le Boncie
Giovanna Morganti farms 3.5 biodynamic hectares at the southern edge of Chianti Classico, coaxing pure, age-worthy Sangiovese from ancient soils and choosing IGT Toscana over appellation rules to make wine entirely on her own terms.