Col D'Orcia

Col d’Orcia is one of those Tuscan wine estates that you have to taste before you get familiair with the high quality of its wines. Th estate quietly does its work, year after year, and lets the wines do the talking.

It is located on the southern slopes of Montalcino, looking over the Orcia valley, with Brunello di Montalcino as its signature wines and organic farming as a basic choice rather than a marketing trick.​

History
The modern story of Col d’Orcia begins in 1890, when the Franceschi family from Florence bought the property then known as Fattoria di Sant’Angelo in Colle. In 1933 the estate was already presenting its Brunello at a wine fair in Siena, long before the appellation became an international star.​

In 1958 the Franceschi brothers split the property and Stefano Franceschi renamed his share Col d’Orcia, literally “hill above the Orcia,” after the river that borders the area. In the early 1970s the Cinzano family, having a long history in wine and vermouth, took over and began the transformation into a high quality wine estate.​

The vineyards
Col d’Orcia today covers a large estate of around 520 hectares, of which about 150 hectares are vineyards; more than 100 of those are registered for Brunello. That makes it one of the biggest players of Brunello vineyards in Montalcino, though the estate still likes to describe itself as “the biggest of the small wineries.”​

The vineyards lie around the village of Sant’Angelo in Colle, on the southwest side of Montalcino facing the Orcia valley and protected by Monte Amiata. Altitude, sun exposure and sea breeze influences keep the grapes healthy and takes care for slow, even ripening, which is very important for Sangiovese.​

The terroir
This corner of Montalcino is warmer and drier than the northern side, but the altitude and the winds from Monte Amiata help keep the climate in balance. The soils are mainly sandy and stony, with sea bed origins, mixed with clay and limestone in places, which naturally limit yields and give structure and keeps a good acidity in the wines.​

The Orcia valley is part of a UNESCO World Heritage landscape: its a combination of woods, grain fields, olive groves and vines. Col d’Orcia ia an integral part, managing not only vines but also olives and woodland.

Way of winemaking

Col d’Orcia follows a traditional line for Brunello: long fermentations, aging in large Slavonian oak casks and patient bottle aging before release. The goal is not power at all costs but wines that can age, keep their acidity and are there for pure drinking pleasure.​

All the vineyards are farmed organically and the estate has full organic certification, making it one of the largest organic wine farms in Tuscany. In the cellar, the approach is minimalist: estate-grown grapes only, careful selection, and a mix of large casks and some smaller barrels or tonneaux depending on the cuvée.​

Three fun facts
One fun detail is the label: three stylized hills represent the central role of the vineyards, and a hand pointing to a star to indicate that quality is most important. It is a simple image, but it sums up the estate’s self-image as farmers first, winemakers second.​

Another curiosity is that every bunch of grapes is said to be “touched by human hands,” a way of underlining how much work in the vineyard is still done manually despite the estate’s size. That hands-on routine runs from green harvest and canopy work to the final picking of each cluster.​

Finally, Col d’Orcia’s owner, Count Francesco Marone Cinzano, also spent years making wine in Chile, bringing back ideas about vineyard research, local varieties and sustainability that have fed into the way Col d’Orcia farms and experiments in Montalcino. It is a reminder that even a very traditional Brunello house must adapt to new techniques and ideas.​