Giovanna and Stefano produce just shy of 100 cases per vintage of pure Canaiolo, from a 0.3-hectare parcel planted in the early 2000s. A rare example of Canaiolo in purezza, this deeply colored yet jubilant wine spends a year in used 225-liter French oak barrels after a spontaneous fermentation in cement, offering a juicier, breezier personality than the other red wines in the Pacina lineup, yet with an equally soil-marked core. Feather pillow soft, bright and lofty, the wine reels with high-toned and dusty red fruit (cranberry, powdered strawberry) and abundant floral elements of violets, both dried and fresh, peony, and sagebrush. There’s an alluring energy here, a raw-ness, almost as if there’s an electric charge running through the wine, but at no point does it give way to anything menacing or out of place. Drink this one on the cooler side and decant for 30 mins for best results.
The wines of Giovanna Tiezzi and Stefano Borsa’s Pacina estate are neither tethered to rigid Tuscan traditionalism nor adrift in nebulous experimentation. To the contrary, they feel like a natural fact—as if they could be no other way than exactly how they are—and threading that wisp of a needle requires a near-subliminal rightness of engagement with one’s land, tradition, methodology, and vision. Situated on the border of Castelnuovo Berardenga in the Chianti Classico zone, the property traces its vinetending origins to the 10th century. In true polycultural fashion, only 11 of the estate’s 65 hectares are planted to vines; the rest consisting of olive trees, chickpeas and spelt, uncultivated fields, and unadulterated woodlands, with all corners of the property tended to without chemical interference. In the labyrinthine cellars (a remnant of an ancient monastery) fermentations proceed naturally and at their own pace, with no temperature stabilization; SO2 is administered as needed and often not at all; and bottling takes place according to the evolution of each individual wine rather than to the time sensitive pressures of the marketplace.