POGGIO ROMITA

Fattoria POGGIO ROMITA Tavarnelle Val di Pesa (prov. Firenze, TOSCANA)

The name Val di Pesa is clear enough: we are vineyards. Not that he did not know about here in the basin of the river Pesa, one of the wine before…Since already more than a tributaries of the . Brother rivers in this century, his Florentine family had been area are the Elsa, flowing more downstream involved in wine, with both his father and his towards the Arno, and the Greve, arriving grandfather engaged in bottling and selling. upstream, near . All three rivers are At the end of the sixties, with a group of related with one of ’s wine heartlands, the friends he set up a wine shop later known as Classico. the Enoteca Pinchiorri, in the Via Ghibellina Tavernelle Val di Pesa is a small town and in Florence. lies halfway between Florence and Siena. The His son Andrea, being the fourth generation countryside is typically Tuscan: it consists of Sestini, studied viticulture at San Michele mainly of vineyards, grain fields and olives, all’Adige and decided to grow for the most with dark tall cypresses and occasionally part Sangiovese vines. With Tavarnelle Val di some oaks of impressively old age. Pesa being on the borderline of Chianti Classico, the estate has vineyards both in Until the late 1960’s, in as well as in Chianti Classico and in the Colli Fiorentini. other rural parts of Italy, the mezzadria Needless to say, Poggio Romita also produces system was still current. The mezzadria dates a fine olive oil Extra Vergine. from far more remote times, since the word comes from the Latin mediarius (‘he that works for half’). Literally meaning that the field labourer had to yield half of his products to the landlord. And – worse – that the soil he worked so hard was not his property. Stories about the harsh fate of these farmers are plenty all over Italy. When the system was finally abolished, large parts of land came up for sale and many a farmer could now buy his own share. Angiolo Sestini, father of the actual Poggio Romita proprietor Andrea, at that time was able to buy 45 hectares of land for himself. Due to the mezzadria, he found a miscellaneous lot of plants and started planting olives and vines. In 1975, he finally was the owner of some 30 hectares of