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Food & Beverage Industry

Vittorio Fiore and the emergence of Tuscany

Wines & Vines, March, 2000 by Jordan Ross, Beppe Filipetti

Over the last couple of decades, Italy has achieved more dramatic increases in wine quality than any other country in the world. Tuscany has emerged as the leader in advances in viticulture and winemaking producing both newer-style as well as traditional Sangiovese-based red wines.

But prior to this renaissance, there were big problems in Tuscany. For example, in 1965 it was possible to buy 100 hectares (one ha = 2.47 acres) with houses and the villa for around $15,000. The value of the land was depressed because of the low average quality of wine production. Italian wine was considered a good value; it sold well because it was inexpensive. At that time, Italian winemakers found it difficult to imagine selling any Italian wine at a high price.

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All this began to change in 1968 when a winery in Bolgheri (on the Tuscan coast) called Tenuta San Guido, produced Sassacaia from Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet franc. In terms of image and marketing, the success of Sassacaia followed three years later by Antinori's Tignanello (Sangiovese, Cabernet) helped focus the world's attention on Tuscany. This small group was the pioneer in the l960s and l970s inspiring many other producers, some more interested in tapping the awesome potential of Sangiovese.

Giacomo Tachis, the first generation of Tuscan enologists, is most closely associated with the big changes in Tuscan viticulture and winemaking. Tachis had the opportunity to work with the famous Bordeaux enologist Emile Peynaud who Antinori had hired as a consultant. The next generation of enologists to achieve visibility and success included Franco Bernabei, Maurizio Castelli and Vittorio Fiore. These technically trained winemakers or consulting enologists, as they came to be known, blazed Tuscany's trail to worldwide recognition by bringing a better scientific understanding and a single-minded focus on quality through increasing spacing, better clones, rootstocks, replacing the cement, fiberglass-lined tanks with stainless steel, the use of better techniques to extract color and flavor and the elimination of white grapes from the Chianti Classico blend. As a result, Tuscany has only begun to realize the awesome potential for quality which has always existed in the form of a favorable climate and low-vigor, hillside, well-drained soils, conditions as well suited to fine wine production as anywhere in the world.

Born in Bolzano in 1941, Vittorio Fiore specialized in Viticulture and Enology at the Scuola Tecnica of San Michele all'Adige (Trento) and graduated from the Conegliano Technical Institute of Agronomy in 1961. After a l0-year period working in several wineries in northern Italy, Fiore moved to Tuscany in 1978 where he established consulting relationships with producers such as Tenuta Caparzo, Costanti, Poggio Salvi, Vecchie Terre di Montefili, Fattoria Viticcio, Fattoria Terrabianca and Borgo Scopeto. Fiore has written numerous technical articles and frequently attends seminars in France, Spain and the United States. He recently realized his dream of creating his own property, Podere Poggio Scalette where he produces the Super Tuscan, Il Carbonaione. In the interview that follows, Fiore gives a personal account of the role he has played and continues to play in Tuscany's emergence as a producer of world class red wines.

Q1: When people talk about Italy's top wine consultants your name is often mentioned. How does your approach differ from other consultants?

Professionally, I have always tried to keep up to date and informed with what is happening in Italy and abroad in the countries most important to the production of quality wine. This has allowed me to assure to the wineries I am consulting for timely information both in the vineyard or the winery, keeping these producers online with the realities of the market.

Q2: Which winegrowing region has had the greatest influence on you?

France and, more specifically, Bordeaux. Since the '70s not only have I gone to Bordeaux at least once a year but I also attended various courses and presentations given at the University of Bordeaux.

Q3: What is your opinion on Sangiovese produced in California?

I have yet to taste a great Sangiovese like ours. I believe they don't have the right viticulture to produce Sangiovese. The Sangiovese vine doesn't like to be too productive. In the cellar the technology is perfect, giving good perfume in the nose, good wood but the result is light wine, empty wine. In Italy we have many regions where Sangiovese is produced but only in a few of them do you obtain a wine that can age for many years.

Q4: Summarize your achievements as a consultant.

Before 1991, prior to making my own wine, my professional activity was dedicated to the improvement of Italian viticulture and enology in general and of Tuscany in particular, with the objective of the renovation of Italian viticulture, the increased efficiency of winery technology and the modernization of the laws regulating all the activities of our region.

Food & Beverage Industry

Vittorio Fiore and the emergence of Tuscany

Wines & Vines, March, 2000 by Jordan Ross, Beppe Filipetti

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