Fattoria di Sammontana

Montelupo, Tuscany, Italy

The history of the estate begins in the 1870’s when Polish nobleman Michele Dzieduszycki moved his family to Tuscany and settled on the same land still farmed today by the third and fourth generation, Andrea and Daniele.  They are located near the town of Empoli, in between Florence and Pisa.

The winery is adjacent to a 12th century Roman church and an old convent, which was historically used by monks as a place of rest and retirement. In the 17th century an underground cellar was built, and it is still used today by the Dzieduszycki family for barrel aging.

Although vines were always grown here, it was Daniele’s grandfather who first started making and bottling quality wines. The property is currently made up of 16 hectares of vines and over 3,000 olive trees (they make amazing oil), all surrounding their home and cellar. The farming here has always been organic, and they also started farming with biodynamic principles in 2012, which they are now fully committed to across the entire estate.

 

In the cellar, the work follows a simple philosophy: do as little as needed whilst maintaining a precise and high standard of wine production. All of the wines are usually fermented in old concrete vats and aging is done in a mixture of concrete, steel tanks, clay amphoras, and old barrels. Through the family’s continued efforts to push the boundaries of their own winemaking, the wines are obsessively pure and expressive, and feature a real, honest, and quintessential stamp of Tuscany.