ColleMassari Grattamacco Winery

The day was one of those that you can’t forget .. the picture perfect.

The sun was shining , the temperature was perfect .. may be on the warm side.

The sky was dressed with its best color, a blue with no clouds. After all it was the middle of September and in most of the years that is the time to visit Tuscany and its vineyards.

One more thing : it was Harvest time as well .. a bonus that we didn’t forget and we appreciated.

When the GPS directed me with “ turn left” ;

I stopped and looked at the dirt road. I didn’t turn immediately, I got out of the car and looked around for a better way.

Well .. there were not better ways .. I had to adventure myself with my new SUV on the dirt road ( actually not much of a road to be honest ) and I needed to go up hill, to climb a quite steep hill of course with no guard rail to protect me.

What really surprised me was how would GOOGLE MAPS even know that the old dirt road was the way to Grattamacco winery.

GPS Technology is absolutely amazing.

We passed near hectares of vineyards with their beautiful colors which offered a great contrast against the blue sky. I couldn’t drive more than few hundreds yards before I had to stop to take pictures. As we got higher over the hill, the view over the valley and the not far away sea was just amazing, one of the best place in the Maremma.

When we finally arrived at the gate, it magically opened and our host welcomed us with contagious enthusiasm. She was a young tall woman with curly hair. Very gracious and exciting.

We walked to the entrance of the hospitality area. She was very passionate and knowledgeable of the winery and its history. The view was gorgeous and from there the top of the hill showed the castle that originated all the fuzz of Bolgheri wine, Sassicaia.

The Grattamacco winery is located about an hour away by road from Castello ColleMassari. It dates back to 1977 and it lies on a rise between Castagneto Carducci and Bolgheri, enjoying a panoramic view of the Tuscan coast. The Grattamacco vineyards are located at an altitude of about 100m above sea level, in a wonderfully protected position over one of Bolgheri's only two hills. Its neighbours in this location are those other wineries that, along with Grattamacco, make the name Bolgheri internationally renowned. This area benefits from a dry climate with considerable temperature fluctuations and is famous for its great wines. Unlike other Tuscan wine-producing areas, such as Chianti or Montecucco, Sangiovese is still also cultivated here, but increasingly less frequently. The central types are the Bordeaux-Blend types: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Cabernet Franc. So, all robust red wine types from which robust and long-lasting wines are vinified. The property has been part of the ColleMassari Group since 2002.

The area is particularly dedicated to the production of great wines and enjoys a dry climate with consistent thermal excursions at the end of the summer. The estate extends over an area of about 74 hectares, of which 27 are vineyards and 10 are olive groves. The remaining area is forest and borders into a vast area of woodlands covering some 1,600 hectares. In the steep and hilly vineyards, with an average eight percent incline, wines are trained to Cordone speronato, to Guyot and to Alberello with yields of around 6 to 7 tons per hectare. The average age of the vineyards is about 25 years.

FOUNDED

1977

ALTITUDE

100 m

TOTAL AREA

74 ha

THE VINEYARDS

The Grattamacco vineyards are situated in an ecological cradle, protected from the strong sea winds.

They cover 14 hectares, featuring the following three types of soil:

Silt and red sandy soil in the Alberello vineyard

Calcareous flysch in the western side of the vineyards

Sandy calcareous flysch in the eastern side of the vineyards

RED WINES GRAPE VARIETIES

1. 60% Cabernet Sauvignon 15% Sangiovese 10% Merlot 10% Cabernet Franc 5% Petit Verdot

WHITE WINES GRAPE VARIETIES

1. 100% Vermentino

During the harvest the grapes are carefully selected manually in the vineyards and posed in truncated cone shaped oak vats holding 700 litres, where the open fermentation is natural with soft manual punching down and a long maceration process takes place.

1. The malolactic fermentation develops spontaneously in French oak barriques, keeping the different varieties separate. During the aging process in French oak barriques of 12 to 18 months the blends are created, following a bottle refinement of at least 6 months.
   

After the in depth description of the winery, it’s size and the history we walked to the inside of the winery itself.

It was the best time of the year to visit it as she told us. There was a great ferment of work with grapes coming to the winery and sorted it and crashed and made ready for the fermentation stage.

We were able to see large barrels of the first phase of that stage with grapes just crashed and doing maceration. You could feel the lack of oxygen and the large presence of CO2 near the barrels. This being one of the primary experience when near a grape fermenting vat.

The beautiful smell of fresh must was impregnating the area, large pipes were getting primed to fill the large stainless steel tanks.

It was just an amazing experience just to look and to meet that hard working people that were trying to make the vintage 2019 one for the ages. In fact from the 2019 harvest we should expect great wines.

We moved downstairs in the barrels storage “ Bottaia” were many vintages were aging.

The large room filled with Barriques, the beautiful smell of wood mixed with aging wines was astonishing.

Finally it was time for our long waited wine tasting, in the tasting room. The proper tasting notes will be posted as soon as we will try all the selection of wines that are now part of our collection.

Here is a brief description of the visit f their wines l.

We spent there a large part of our day that was packed with appointments to visit more wineries. But we had a great start visiting Grattamacco .. it was really an amazing experience; we sadly said goodbye.

The way back turned to be a little easier , but now we were just expert drivers through those hills and the great vineyards ... it was an exciting moment .. hey we were in Bolgheri.

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