Pian dell'Orino. A First Visit.
Chapter One: Getting there.
I’m behind a box truck that is pitching 20 degrees from vertical on the narrow two-lane road to Montalcino. Looking out the truck's windshield, the driver must notice that the hills he’s crawling past are framed at a nauseating angle. In first gear, and following at a healthy-and-growing distance, I’m petrified. Our unlikely convoy rolls onward for interminable kilometres. I don’t know if there’s an alternative route to Pian dell’Orino. The drama unfolding in front of my rented Jeep is too compelling: I can’t pull over and consult maps.
The hydraulically-challenged truck reaches its destination, an industrial site in the flatland close to Montalcino. Mercifully below the most winding and vertical stretch of road. I can breathe again.
Jan Henrick Erback and Caroline Politzer live and work quite close to venerable Biondi Santi. The original Brunello maker/catalyst for many estates that now dot the hillsides surrounding Montalcino has a long tunnel of cedars framing its driveway. Ostentatious landscaping, enough to make clear that the path to their storied cellar door is not the road to tiny Pian dell’Orino.
The town of Montalcino is dominated by a very Pythonesque mediaeval fortress. It’s a castle from central casting. I expect to see John Cleese peering from the ledge, shouting insults in fake French, hurling refuse. Cinematic landscapes lead my thoughts astray. The farcical roundabout below the town reminds me of European Vacation. I spin around it for days. Because the farm is not in the town, of course, and I have printed out directions that hinge on this roundabout. The paved main state road that will eventually lead to both Biondi Santi (now French owned, maybe in a state of waning prominence) and Pian dell’Orino (tiny, hidden down an unmarked gravel path, very much on the upswing) passes through the roundabout below the fortress. I drive through the roundabout more than I’d like to admit. To tamp down frustration, I stop to look at the impressive clustering of wine bars, gift shops, and wine-themed eateries that now comprise the centre of this community. I tread carefully. There are no bargains to be had here, and my travel budget doesn’t include a line-item for a suitcase bulging with Brunello di Montalcino.
To the fair, the town’s enotecas are more than willing to ship internationally. For free! Because the retail price of any case of Montalcino wine is going to offset a DHL expense. The best wines of Montalcino are worth a tidy sum. The rest still command it. So I’ve waited until late in my wine career to visit this heartland of Sangiovese. Price isn’t everything, and maybe it’s a dull thing to discuss. Apologies. I thrive on the hunt for value, and Montalcino isn’t a logical hunting ground when considering the bottom line.
During the housebound months of Covid isolation, a remarkable thing happened. I drank a few bottles of Rosso (and eventually Brunello) di Montalcino that upended my consideration of that denomination. The wines had energy. Aromas of pristine red fruit and brambly fresh herbs lifted from the glass and swirled around in my consciousness for minutes on end. In short, these bottles were world class wines that delivered on the promise of Montalcino in a way I hadn’t experienced before. They were expensive, and worth every penny.
They were from Pian dell’Orino.
As travel restrictions loosened, I marked a first visit to Montalcino on my calendar. At last I was on my way. But regrettably (the leaning truck of Montalcino, the inscrutable roundabout) I was running late. I had a sense this wouldn’t go over well with the people responsible for creating such finely detailed Sangiovese. And in fact when I arrived, Jan Henrick Erback and Caroline Politzer seemed worried. They probably thought I was dead! A half hour behind schedule felt like a significant faux pas. Luckily, the couple are meticulous and kind in equal measure. Instead of a reproach, I was greeted with an expansive tour of the garden surrounding their home. In a past life Jan was a landscape architect, and it shows.
Chapter Two: Everything that matters.
Caroline is from Alto Adige. Jan is German. In 1997, Caroline purchased the farmhouse outside Montalcino that is now their home. At that time the European Union was incentivising investment in rural properties, allowing the planting of new vineyards. She took advantage. Not long after purchasing the property, Caroline met Jan. In a few short years the couple were able to harness his understanding of botany and enthusiasm for biodynamic agriculture to begin a singular, remarkable estate.
In 1998 the first vines were planted. In 2001 the first wines were made. In 2006 the couple constructed an impressive round cellar near their home. The multi-level facility’s shape, and the use of all natural construction materials, is in keeping with fundamental principles of biodynamics. “The wines sleep better than we do!” Caroline jokes. Formerly, their house was both a cellar and residence. It is a beautiful home, with a living room filled by records and high fidelity audio equipment, and a hallway dominated by an enviable glass-walled personal wine collection. But upstairs (where they sleep) hasn’t been renovated. With so much happening in the fields, who has time to build a bedroom?
The farm is divided into four parcels. The land closest to the house and cellar is the source for Sangiovese grapes that become Piandellorino IGT. It’s an entry-level bottling, and a small fraction of the estate’s total production. “It’s not a terroir wine,” according to Jan.The farm’s other parcels (including Vigneti di Versante and Bassolino di Sopra, source vineyards for the Brunellos) are farther from the cellar. All told, Pian dell’ Orino covers 5.5 hectares of vineyard, and 3.5ha of forest. The couple also have some olive trees, and Jan is very enthusiastic about the planting of fruit trees to improve biodiversity.
A hive of angry bees on the path provides an element of danger/excitement to the vineyard tour. Maybe the pollinators are mad that I’m late as well! This winter, Jan constructed a chicken palace. It is resting at the edge of a new vineyard, next to the farm’s impressive compost pile. Soon the chickens will sleep better than Caroline and Jan, too.
Jan follows the lunar calendar for pruning. In keeping with biodynamics, they make big pots of nettle and chamomile tea to spray on the vineyards, mixed in solution with bentonite clay. These treatments increase the density of positive microorganisms in the fields, essential to fight against microbial life forms that are detrimental to the vine.
“The mechanisation/compaction of the soil weakens the auto-defence systems of the vine.” Jan is taking remarkable action to counteract this compaction. He’s planting a new site with a goblet/alberello vine training system that aims to restore some harmony to the fields. “Etruscans found vines in the woods,” he states. “They didn’t just bring the vines (to the fields) they also brought the trees.” By planting trees next to his new vines, Jan hopes to restore the symbiotic relationship between vine and tree that the Estruscans established. He’s using maples. Once they are tall, the trees should provide shade that will beneficially lower yields in the vineyard, and reduce the potential for scorching and overripeness.
Veraison in August is the moment in a vine’s life when the greatest amount of sugar is being produced. But the aromatic peak-of-importance for a winemaker is about a month later, when polyphenols/terpenes/pyrazine that will make or break the lasting character of the wine are formed. Jan has found that he can win his grapes a few extra days of polyphenolic maturation by pruning off the main part of the Sangiovese cluster, keeping only the “wing” of the grape bunch. Using this radical-sounding method, they end up with small bunches of Sangiovese with more moderate levels of alcohol. Additionally, Pian dell’Orino leaves only one grape cluster per vine. It’s a sign of how far Jan will go in pursuit of perfection.
Across the field and cellar, other indicators of passion for quality are easy to find. All the fruit is harvested by hand into small cases. Grapes are destemmed, and then passed through a double selection process on a vibrating sorting table that removes insects, dried berries, and other unwanted detritus. The berries are covered with a layer of CO2 in cask, so the winery can avoid using SO2.
Pian dell’Orino purchased an optical selection machine that has reduced the harvest/grape selection time at the winery from two weeks to two-to-three days. This expensive piece of machinery allows Jan and Caroline to avoid sunburn and overripeness in the final moments of the vintage. Now they have time to pre-cut bad fruit prior to harvest, so the grape pickers (who of course have varying degrees of viticultural experience) can harvest everything, without blemished fruit affecting the quality of the eventual wine.
The barrel cellar is made from volcanic material. Jan allows no visitors to enter this underground room. He wants to preserve the 90 percent humidity/ambient temperature control in the cellar, and to avoid introducing foreign aromas. The room naturally stays between 11 degrees Celsius in winter and 16 degrees in summer. Alongside the large oak casks, wine bottles can be stored upright in the room without fear of the corks drying out, because of the high level of humidity. In fact, Jan points out that the only remaining wine bottles to be collected from the cellar are on a pallet bearing the inscription “Piedmont Wine Imports.” Along with being personally late to arrive today, apparently my wines are slow to depart. I’m not very German.
Underneath the barrels in the cellar are unfinished patches of clay soil that allow for contact with the earth, and improve circulation. Jan stores water in a vast tank built into the external wall of the cellar. This helps with thermoregulation. Also, having a large reservoir of potable water in this dry region is a sensible thing to do. At the time of my visit, it hadn't rained in Montalcino in 90+ days.
We taste wines at Jan and Caroline’s dining table.
A 2021 Rosso di Montalcino cask sample has a pretty garnet color. The wine is a result of a warm spring, then a cool early summer, followed by a warm late summer. It was a year of extremes. Frost damaged the vines. Across the region, the ripening period was uneven. The wine is good. There’s significant dry tannin on the finish, which is to be expected at this point of evolution.
The 2020 Rosso di Montalcino has a much more violet aroma, followed by a rush of very ripe blackberry and currant on the palate. The wine is remarkable: an obvious success. Jan says the vintages were similar, except that 2020 was spared 2021’s spring frost.
The 2019 Rosso di Montalcino is strawberry cream and raspberry, with a tiny whiff of balsamic/dark chocolate sweetness. There are flowers in abundance in this one.
2018 was a rainy year. It was a vintage where grapes struggled to mature. We taste a cask sample of the Brunello di Montalcino that will be bottled in two weeks. The estate will only make one Brunello in 2018. Given the challenging vintage, the cask samples has great aromas, and complexity. It’s a woodsy, midweight wine that I’ll be tempted to drink a few years after it reaches America.
The 2019 Bassolino di Sopra Brunello di Montalcino will be released in 2025/2026. The wine already has an exceptional texture. Ripe aromas that (again) border on floral. I wonder how much Jan’s dedication to biodiversity affects the wildly aromatic character of this wine. The fruit is very forward and pristine. Fresh forest berries.
By contrast, the 2017 Vigneti di Versante has more roasted, savoury aromas. This is a wine from a hot, dry year, a wine for meat, a wine to age.
It’s easy to imagine that a few years ago the living room where we sat discussing wine was filled with nine large barrels. It’s classic Tuscan architecture. I have to leave, to explore more of this new-to-me land. Before departure, I’m already longing for the arrival of that last lonely pallet of Pian dell’Orino to North Carolina. I’ll keep you all updated as it moves west!