An Italian winemaker inspired by South America is transforming a Tuscan estate by taking a farm-to-table rather than commercial approach.

A little boy named Santiago couldn't contain his excitement as his father pulled up the thirty-five mile long country road. To him, there was no place on Earth he cared more about than his final destination. As they approached, the little boy waved to passing men who were leading the way on horseback and wearing traditional straw hats to combat the sun.


He squealed with joy when he saw an old bodega in the distance. As soon as the car stopped, Santiago ran outside to walk through the vineyards where multigenerational families worked their land and immediately dipped his hands into the soil - healthy, living soil - and smeared it all over his face.

He wanted to be part of the vineyards radiating''life, and followed the families, asking them every question that popped into his curious head. One of the fathers smiled to himself, as it was very common for Santiago to be different from his other siblings. Santiago was the middle child, who knew from the moment he could think he wanted to be part of the long tradition of wine making. No shiny toy could distract him from the vines that fascinated him so much. Irrigation systems in Chile getty It was an idyllic place to grow, the small village of Caliboro in Central Chile, in the Maule Valley. Chile is already an extremely isolated place in itself, very long and narrow, with the Andes Mountains, the longest continental mountain range in the world, with one''side, and the Pacific Ocean on the other. Nevertheless, Caliboro is a small Chile within Chile, as it is isolated with the help of the mountains bordering it on one side and the river, one of the few rivers in Chile without a bridge, on the other side, connecting it to the outside world. And so Caliboro is a pure place where ancient peasant customs are preserved, as the people live in harmony with the environment and there is an endless cycle where the soil gives to the people and the people give back to the soil, keeping it healthy and viable.

Some might think

Santiago is one of the children of multigenerational farmers who started working with his parents from a very young age because he was so obsessed with vineyards and cellars. But his parents were''Italian; his father came from his own multi-generational family of a large wine company from the Piedmont region. His father once moved with his family to a remote region of Chile when Santiago was barely a year old.

A new adventure

Santiago's father, Count Francesco Marone Cinzano, comes from a long line of nobility in Northern Italy; his family began producing sparkling wines and vermouth in the 18th century, and their family brand, Cinzano, is well known around the world.

Something that would be unique and hopefully

He found Caliboro in Maule and saw that there was enough rainfall, drying out is a problem in Chile, it's a little cooler here than in''his better known neighboring wine regions to the north, and here there is also a dramatic change in temperatures from day to night, which helps to achieve the appropriate degree of ripeness without loss of acidity. He therefore imported vines from France as he noticed that one of the main problems for local growers was the lack of quality genetic material.

It is noted that farmers in Chile at that time had not yet read books on biodynamics

They simply followed what their father and grandfather had taught them, as Maule was one of the first areas in Chile where vineyards were planted. Compared to many modern farming methods, what these Chilean farmers were doing seemed wild. However, Francesco''noticed how healthy and disease resistant the vines were and his wines, Erasmo, had excellent balance and an overall fine quality characteristic.

Villa Col d'Orcia in Montalcino

Francesco was also the second person in his family to dream of a different type of life. His father, Santiago's grandfather, bought a century-old historic wine estate inTuscany in 1973. The estate is called Col d'\''Orcia, and it is a major member of the Brunello di Montalcino consortium, established in 1967.

Since then, starting in the late 1800s, it bottled the famous Brunello di Montalcino wines under a different name, before the wine became known as Brunello di Montalcino. Santiago's grandfather absolutely loved this area of Montalcino in the region''Tuscany, as everything you could want seemed to grow here: olives, various grains, truffles and incredible vines of the Sangiovese variety.

In 2005, Santiago's father was called back to Italy.

To become the owner of the Col d'\''Orcia estate, and so he returned toTuscany, but not for the first time. Prior to this, the estate had been run by a commercially-oriented entity that had been the root of the Cinzano family for generations. But Santiago's father, raised with a different mindset, was focused on each vineyard plot, and so he converted all the vineyards to organic cultivation, receiving official certification in 2010, and also implemented biodynamic practices such as placing manure in cow horns to aid in''dry weather. This vineyard is a working experiment that they have been researching since they took ownership of the estate. They believe this could be the future top vineyard for great Brunello di Montalcino wines.

Another single-vineyard wine is the Poggio al Vento vineyard, which Santiago's grandfather planted nearly 50 years ago. It was an odd choice for the time, as the soil there is sandy and produced more delicate, elegant wines, rather than the big wines that were more sought after in the 1970s. But today, Poggio al Vento is considered a gem for its elegance and lovely nuances. However, Santiago said his father was never able to ask his grandfather why he planted a vineyard there