Caparsa

April 2022, Vines have soul: a day at Caparsa

Paolo Cianferoni seems happy to see me. Before my car door is even closed we are off on a whirlwind tour of the cellar, ending with a formidable line-up of his wines, new and antique. Paolo is always generous with bottles, but I may be benefitting from the recent visit of a prominent American wine journalist. Whatever the reason, I’m happy to taste through verticals of Caparsino and Doccio a Matteo, wines that, as they age, and as I grow familiar with their evolutions, allow me to learn a little about Radda terroir and vintage. The wines are so direct. 

We start with the fresh stuff. 2020 Rosato di Caparsa IGT is as dark as they come. Maybe there’s an edge of rosato to the the burgundy color. A faint vivid glow. The fruit of this wine is compelling, forest berries, exuberant. I like it so much that when we sold out in autumn, I started buying bottles back from local retailers, to drink at home!

The current release of Rosso di Caparsa IGT is very fruity. Pristine Sangiovese. I bought a fiasco of this wine, to drink in Umbria. One day I’ll import it in straw baskets. In either format, it’s inspirational stuff. The IGT wines of Caparsa seriously over-deliver. 

The 2018 Chianti Classico is aged mainly in cement. It has beautiful aromas. Really nice, uplifting, pure red fruit. On the palate it’s delicate, light, with a fine tannic edge to the finish. The wine is a real triumph in the classic style for Chianti. It speaks to my personal preferences in Sangiovese. I’ll drink this, and leave hotter vintages to collect dust.

2015 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva MAGNUMS are making an encore appearance in North Carolina. This is yet another item where you, dear consumer, will be racing me to purchase scant inventory. Not sure who I want to win!

1999 vin santo is a mix of intense glacéed orange rind and toasty Madeira. So thrilled and honored that Paolo shares this with us. Now’s a happy (if brief) time when bottles are around. Grab one to top off your next Tuscan feast, with or without biscotti. 

“Wine is a mirror of life.” The life of a vine at Caparsa is hard. In the Chianti Classico DOCG, seven tons per hectare is the maximum permissible yield. Paolo’s vines yield five.

“Quality means organic. It’s the only chance. Hope for the next generation.” Paolo explains that in the vineyard there are many thousands of microorganisms. The work of the farmer is to grow this community. “Under the soil, there is a communication. A mycorrhizal network. Vines have soul. Soul is important to this kind of wine.”

“Herbicides are poison that kill not only plants, but the habitat for insects.” Paolo explains that they destroy any chance of biodiversity in a community. 

“Alcohol is poison. But resveratrol is heart-healthy. Quercetin is healthy. My father and grandfather drank one and a half liters of wine per day, and lived into their 90’s.” Wow. Other factors may have been in play. Rural Tuscany is a decent landscape for healthy living. You’ll get your steps in! 

Paolo’s father Reginaldo Cianferoni bought Caparsa in 1965. It was fully abandoned after World War II. All the former farmers moved to industrializing cities, to find steady paychecks. This is the reason why sixty percent of Chianti Classico today is under foreign ownership.

“The British arrived in the 1960’s. They called it Chianti-shire. The Americans arrived after 1998. 

Reginaldo Cianferoni also worked at the university in Florence, and wrote a book about the daily life of people in Chianti. The story is told through the narrative device of a group of locals gathered at a simple restaurant, telling stories after dinner. Illustrations from that book adorn Caparsa’s labels. 

Paolo was seven when his father bought the farm. He started working on the tractor right away. He reckons he’s worked 55 vintages at Caparsa. It’s not surprising that recent wines have gone from very good to brilliant. 

Also tasted:

2019 Bianco di Caparsino smells of lemon rind and candle wax. It’s made from Trebbiano and Malvasia. It would be perfect with a Carbonara. Maybe we’ll get some bottles for autumn. Paolo didn’t make a 2020 bianco, because the vintage was too hot to make a balanced white. 

Paolo’s second-oldest son Filippo made a natural wine from Trebbiano and Malvasia. It’s an orange wine aged in amphora, and it’s all sold out: destination California. Paolo is kind enough to let us try the wine anyway. 

The 2018 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva is beautiful. Violet, blackberry, and cassis. It is aged in 1,800-liter barrels. Mid-weight, and in the classic, moderate Chianti Classico style. 

Paolo thinks the 2018 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva is one of the best wines he’s ever made. The structure, the complexity, the many, many layers of blackness: I see what Paolo means. Today the wine is quite tannic. I’ll revisit it in a few years. 

The 2017 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva is 100% Sangiovese from a warm dry vintage, aged in 1,800-liter barrels. There’s a marked graphite aroma. The fruit (in comparison to the previous wine) comes across as subtle. The tannin is long, but not brutal. 

The 2016 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva (100% Sangiovese) really is a complete wine. For me this is Caparsa at its finest. Excellent texture. Optimal Sangiovese aromatics. I love it. 

The 2016 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva (Sangiovese with a few percent Colorino) is a little more saline, and a little more prune. 

The 2015 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva is quite structured. It’s a tad drier than the 2016. Words like taut and lean come to mind. Bring it to the table for bistecca.

2012 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva is showing signs of secondary maturation. There’s more forest floor. Paolo says this is a false maturity, a sign of the vintage, not the age. 

The 2011 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva smells of woodsmoke, followed by nice harmonious black fruit on the palate. It leaves a very persistent, positive impression. 

The 2018 Mimma Super Tuscan is something new to me. It’s very soft, very easy to drink, and according to Paolo, geared specifically to the American market. Lush, expensive. He quips that if some people wanna pay more, he can handle that. 

A bottle of 1999 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva aged in barrique and toneaux seems fully mature. 

At the end, we try a bottle of 1988 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva. Thirty-four years old! It has the traditional Chianti composition: Sangiovese, Malvasia, and Trebbiano. What a treat. Plum, stewed fruit, a relic of pre-global warming moderate temperatures. Paolo is generous to a fault. 

Outside it is bitterly cold, unseasonably so for early April. Exiting the cozy cellar, we hustle over to Federico’s little house on the property, for lunch. Fresh pasta prepared by his mother, lardo and pate bruschetta, delicious porchetta from a small butcher in Panzano (no, not that one.) Federico’s dog Pancake circles the table. His partner joins us, as does his younger brother Filippo. It’s a convivial meal, enlivened by the highlights from our cellar tasting. It’s just what I needed.  

July 9, 2020 - Looking ahead.

Last July I was staying at Caparsa, two-thirds of the way through a work travel marathon that started in Naples and wound as far south as Manduria, before circling back for final days in Umbria and Tuscany. Now that I’m marooned by Coronavirus inside our borders, and mostly inside these four walls, I think back fondly to time on that farm. Actually it was pretty hot in Radda during my stay. And there was a lot of early morning tractor activity, at least early by cityfolk standards. In spite of the elevation, Paolo Cianferoni’s guest house was a little oven during daylight hours. A couple of afternoons I hiked through the fields and forest to the village of Radda, beautiful walks ending in gelato or an aperol spritz, (or both.) 

A wave of recent critical acclaim in the wine press keeps the availability of Caparsa in the USA tenuous, and fleeting. Please read through my notes from wandering around Caparsa’s 16th century cellar, tasting things with Paolo, and let me/us know if you’d like some wine. For better or worse, we won’t necessarily be able to fill all requests. 

Paolo noted that his grandfather’s generation would drink two liters of wine a day. As the last generation before Italy’s post-WWII industrial boom, it was their only drink, and it was low alcohol, frequently served with water added. It is Paolo’s intention to make healthy wine that you can drink a lot. Wine with all the antioxidant properties intact, quercetin and other polyphenols, etc. The kind of wine that helped preserve these old timers, and could be a reason why Italians live longer lives than many of their European counterparts. Twenty two percent of the Italian population is over 65, the life expectancy of the average Italian male is 81, for Italian women it is 85.

How does Cianferoni make a healthier wine? It starts with native yeast. According to Paolo, a winemaker only adds selected yeasts because their grapes are sterile from the use of too many chemical products in the vineyard. Years of certified organic farming at Caparsa have created a vibrant and useful microbiome. Paolo’s wines ferment with their skins, powered by wild yeast. The grapes are destemmed, and typically fermentation lasts two weeks. Last year it lasted 29 days! I f malolactic fermentation doesn’t occur naturally because acid/alcohol levels are too high, or the cellar is too cold, Paolo adds the sediment from young wine in the following year, to kick-start to malo.  

Paolo’s family first planted vines at Caparsa in the 1960s. In the 1970’s his grandfather restored the (16th century) old cellar and built the new cellar. His mother was adamantly against buying the property: she thought it would ruin them. Tuscany in the 1960s and 1970s was basically abandoned, stripped of its labor force by the flight of former sharecroppers and the collapse of the feudal latifundia system in the wake of World War II. Buying property and making wine seemed a risky proposition. 

The soil here is clay/Alberese limestone marl. Clay, and quartz, rocky. 

Quality across the Chianti Classico region has risen steadily since 1997, a watershed vintage that made global wine drinkers sit up and pay attention to wine from Tuscany (again.) An influx of investment and expertise followed. In two short decades central Tuscany was transformed from an impoverished hinterland, into a playground for food-loving international tourists, second homes, luxury cars, olive trees, and vines. 

Paolo remembers the days before the Germans and Scandanavians bought all the land. He says there used to be wheat, pigs, mulberry trees (for silk.) It was working polyculture. Little had changed from the middle ages. He likes the film Il ballo da sola (Stealing Beauty, a later work by Bertolucci starring Liv Tyler) as it encapsulates this era well. I’ve never seen it, but we’ll take his word. 

As vineyards across the globe swelter from the effects of global warming, it helps that Caparsa faces northeast, away from the summer sun’s hottest rays. Two generations ago south-facing sites were necessary to fully ripen Sangiovese. “Now the finest properties evaporate under the sun,” Paolo states. “In Italy it is still not (legally) possible to irrigate. (Therefore) It is still possible to create an expression of terroir.”

Paolo mentions a handful of the many good wineries working in his region today. Poggerino, Monteraponi, Poggio al Sole, Cascina da Cornia. We really are living in a golden age for Chianti Classico. Let’s hope the hills of this special landscape are high enough to moderate the progressively hotter summers, to allow the Sangiovese renaissance to continue. 

Caprsa bottles 45% of its total production. Now they are making 50,000 bottles. The farm has the capacity to produce 120,000. The remainder is sold to negociants, Antinori, Ruffino, etc. Until two years ago they were only bottling 33%, but strong domestic demand (they have good national distribution across Italy) has allowed Paolo and his sons to do more.

Across seven days I tasted and drank nearly everything Caparsa had available. In the cellar, al fresco with beautiful local charcuterie, on the patio with epic grilled bisteca fiorentina from the butcher of Panzano, late at night while watching heat lightning flash across the forested hills of Radda and beyond. 

Here’s a summary of what I tasted. 

2018 Bianco di Caparsino is currently available in N.C. Paolo thinks it’s the best vintage of white wine they’ve ever made. They used dry ice to cool down the fermentation vessels, which might be why the wine is lighter on the palate, lighter in color, and more overtly mineral than before. We purchased most of their tiny production for drinking this summer in balmy North Carolina.

2018 Rosato Toscana has come and gone, sadly. Maybe some bottles are still in shops. It was made with a selection of grapes from closer to the forest, “a fresher place.” Flavorful, intense, dry, a touch flinty. Bright cherry. The juice spends 24 hours on the skins. There is no temperature control. They roll the rosato barrels outside in winter, to precipitate the tartrates out of solution.

2016 Chianti Classico This is a first for Caparsa, a new not-riserva Chianti Classico. 100% Sangiovese, aged in cement for 18 months. 

Lot 11/14 of the Rosso di Caparsa has also come and gone from our North Carolina warehouse. Look for a new lot this winter. When tasted last July it was fresh and enjoyable, not possessing the gravity of the new Chianti Classicos, but a seriously gulpable red for drinking in summer and fall. 

2016 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva is likely to be sold out by the time you read this: sorry. Blame the media. When tasted last summer it was quite intense, closed, tannic. A big wine for the cellar. Lots of tarry black fruit. 

2015 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva is really very good. Lot of stars and arrows in my notebook indicate an unmissable need to purchase this one. Exceptionally pleasant mouthfeel, rich without sacrificing any of its typicity. Hedonists and nerds alike will gravitate to this bottle. Our world could use a little more consensus. 

2014 Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva (sold out for now, sorry) was in Paolo’s parlance “the other side of the moon.” Clean, fresh, light, easy, good, a slight wine of real precision, a cool vintage classic. 

2015 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva (not currently available in N.C. because we can’t have everything) contains 2% Colorino, alongside the Sangiovese. The wine is aged 50% in cement, 50% in oak barrel. I can taste the heat of the vintage a little more in this one. It’s spicy. 

2012 Doccio a Matteo Chianti Classico Riserva is mellow. With a little aeration a woodsy, wonderfully old-world quality emerges. I kinda love this one. Doccio a Matteo is from a specific part of Caparsa’s land, vines above a natural aquifer that consistently produce top-notch Sangiovese.  

According to Paolo, there are still 50,000 grape growers in Italy, and 1,000 varieties of grapes. It’s a density and diversity worth preserving. “Maybe two percent of people know about wine,” Paolo states. “Ninety-eight percent buy from the supermarket.” It sounds like a grim assessment. Then he elaborates, “Two percent is not a small number.”

Well-said. Two percent of the global wine-drinking population. It’s enough. We are lucky. Places like Caparsa can be preserved, and thrive. 

Paolo Cianferoni speaks at great pace, an uninterrupted stream of essential information regarding Caparsa. His narrative begins immediately, abruptly, and conveys the tremendous amount of work and focus necessary to elevate a winery to this level. Along with being the engine behind this small estate, he is the father of five children, three of whom were born on the estate. Speed and efficiency are critical with that much on your plate!

His work began in 1982. It was initially a matter of rebuilding, to shape the estate into a leading organic farm. The land had been purchased by his family in 1965: the oldest side of the house dates to the 16th century. The vineyards are truly in the heart of Chianti, a perfect location. They radiate out with the cellar as their center.The best vines are situated a few hundred meters farther up the hill from the cellar (450 meters above sea level) and are heavily planted with Sangiovese. Small amounts of Canaiolo, Malvasia Nera, Colorino, and Trebbiano are also grown.

Respect for nature and balance with the larger environment are core principles at Caparsa. Sixty percent of the estate’s land remains forested for biodiversity. There is clear-headed, correct farming happening at Caparsa, and the yield is impressive. “Herbicides simplify a vineyard,” Cianferoni stated. Chemicals have an undeniable dulling impact on a farm’s products. Making wines this thrilling has to be done naturally.

Cianferoni is in the process of selecting and replanting portions of his old vineyards with plant stock culled from his oldest vineyards: massale replanting. He believes these 46-year-old vineyards produce wines that are rustic at first, yet are innately very age-worthy. The vines grow in gallestro and alberese soils. The roots must work hard to derive life from this rocky ground, fight to reach the abundant water deep under the surface. Cianferoni appreciates the struggle of his vines. “When life is too easy it becomes boring, and you kill yourself” he said.  We need toil to sustain us, and so do vines.

Capara’s Caparsino Chianti Classico Riserva is in a league of its own. “Others use notes or paint, I use nature.” The wine is 95% Sangiovese. Cianferoni points out the richness and acidity of Caparsino as fundamental elements necessary for the wine to age.  Caparsino shares its name with the house Cianferoni lives in on the property. “It is a wine for wine lovers, with great complexity and strong emotions. It is too much for some people. It represents, more than the other wines, the terroir (of Caparsa.)”

Cianferoni says his riservas benefit from 15-20 years of ageing.  But they are fundamentally meant to drink. “It is great with beef, simple bread and olive oil. The wine is to provide just a little happiness, not to get out of your mind.”

Caparsa’s cellar is stone, old and cold, with minimal technology. Everything here is deliberate. Fermentations begin with wild yeasts, and for the reds, last about 12 days. Cianferoni uses 10 hectoliter large barrels to age his reds. “Wood has many risks. Small barrels dry too much the wine. And the extra tannin (from small barrels) can be toxic.” He likes a complex mix of Slovenian, American, Hungarian and French oak for his big barrels.

Cianferoni bottles once per year, an average of 20,000 bottles. “If I stay small I control everything.” He ferments in concrete. The very appealing and real Bianco di Caparsa (equal parts Trebbiano and Malvasia) is made by destemming the clusters, then allowing the white juice to stay on its skins for 14 days. The wine varies significantly in character vintage to vintage according to the thickness of these skins, impacted of course by weather. Cianferoni does nothing to control malolactic fermentations. The wines are bottled unfiltered.  He culls extensively in the cellar to maintain top quality. In a typical year he may sacrifice/sell off in bulk 3 to 4 of his 10 large barrels. Only the absolute best are bottled as Caparsa.

Caparsa’s wines are certified organic by the CCPB. “I drink a liter of wine a day. It has to be made in a healthy way.” There is a touch of genius to what is going on at Caparsa. Paolo Cianferoni is a man on his own course, guided by a vision.