Chiara Condello

“Today being revolutionary means taking away rather than adding,
it means slowing down rather than speeding up,
means giving value to silence...”
Frank Arminius

Chiara's project
The idea of making wines that bear my name was born from the awareness of being the custodian of a history of viticulture that has been written and handed down for hundreds of years in the hills of Predappio and from my desire to give a somewhat revolutionary interpretation to this unique, generous and disputed land. To produce a wine that expresses the high potential of these vineyards, freeing it from everything superfluous, a Sangiovese that reflects me and in which I can find and put my ideas into practice.

To do this I chose a small plot of land on the edge of the forest, in the center of the Predappio denomination between 150 and 300 meters above sea level. Here the vines sink their roots into a poor soil, of calcareous-clayey matrix and rich in tuffaceous-sandstone rocks of Pliocene origin called Spungone. Here 3 million years ago there was the sea and from here I started to produce a wine that was the interpretation of this uniqueness.

Philosophy
In my wines I seek the authentic expression of my land, its history, its soul. I imagine a wine of light, free from all the artifices that have too often weighed it down. For this reason I have chosen to work simply, following the dictates of organic viticulture and artisanal management of the cellar.

Respect

In the vineyard all the work is done manually, organic fertilization, mechanical weeding and treatments are carried out only with a very low use of sulfur and copper. Before being good winemakers it is important to be good winemakers: for this reason I follow the vineyard daily, with the aim of bringing healthy and ripe grapes to the cellar that do not require any correction.

Craftsmanship

In the cellar, the work is governed by the principle of respect for the grapes and the timing that Sangiovese requires. The fermentation vats are filled by gravity and I am against anything that can lead to standardization, which is why my way of making wine favors sources of diversity and respect for the grapes: spontaneous fermentations, no temperature control, long macerations. The racking is done manually, with a press from the early twentieth century that has been restored. The refinement takes place in oak barrels, before being completed in the bottle, where the wine is put without being filtered.