Emanuele Graetz grew up in Florence, with wine in the periphery from childhood — his grandfather had acquired a property in the hills above the city, and Emanuele found himself drawn into the vineyard and cellar from an early age. It was during his travels selling wine for the family business that things shifted: encounters with the great growers of Burgundy and Champagne, and with the Piedmontese producers who thought in single parcels and long timescales, convinced him that this was what he wanted to make. He called Chianti Classico the Burgundy of Italy, and set out to prove it. In 2015, at twenty-six, he joined with two friends, Alessandro Mannelli and Niccolò Righini, and bought a single hectare between Panzano and Montefioralle, south-facing at 500 meters, on galestro schist and clay. Falcons had long nested there; the name followed. A neighboring property was offered to them as well, and they took it. The estate now covers 18 hectares, with four of them planted to old vines between 35 and 75 years of age, above the famed Conca d’Oro on the same band of ancient terroir, with the additional freshness that comes from altitude. Production stays deliberately tiny, the farming is organic, and the cellar stays out of the way: spontaneous fermentations, indigenous yeasts, sulfur kept to a minimum, each wine speaking for a single site.
Vecchia Vigna comes from those old vines, a true field blend of the varieties Tuscan farmers once planted together: seventy percent sangiovese with colorino, canaiolo, ciliegiolo, malvasia and trebbiano making up the rest in roughly equal shares. Because white grapes have been barred from Chianti Classico since the 2006 vintage, the wine goes out as IGT Toscana, though it is grown in the heart of the zone. Each vine carries only about 800 grams of fruit. Fermentation is in stainless steel with a twelve-to-fifteen-day maceration, then the wine ages eighteen months in large barrels and eight months in bottle before release. Around 6,000 bottles are made.
The 2023 season in Tuscany was challenging, with a wet spring, heavy downy mildew pressure and a hot summer that cut the crop, and the old, mixed plantings at Panzano came through with concentration and lift. The tannins are firm and fine, the acidity is bright. Blood orange and sour cherry open the wine, then wild strawberry, violet and lavender, a cool flicker of mint from the white grapes in the blend, and a sweet cigar-box note from the cask.
