The crucial decisions behind a Bolgheri red

The soul of Grattamacco lies in “bare winemaking”, declares the Bolgheri producer. But what does this mean in practice?
During a vertical tasting, chief winemaker Luca Marrone discusses the evolution of their flagship wine, Grattamacco Bolgheri Rosso Superiore DOC, and their philosophy.
The philosophy is summed up by well-worn phrases such as “less is more,” ‘less technology, more terroir”, but tasting six wines from the 1991 vintage to the current release, 2021, reveals the decisions that are made to help “perfect fruit transform naturally into wine”.
There is a common thread running through the timeline. The harvest and most of the operations in the cellar are carried out by hand. The belief is that intervening as little as possible will lead to a “pure” and “uncontaminated” style of wine that reflects the authentic bond between the wine and its land. In this case, an estate between Castagneto Carducci and Bolgheri, atop a wooded ridge, with enviable views of the Tuscan coast.
The estate stretches over an area of 80 hectares, of which 35 are planted with vineyards – although only about 25 are currently in production.
After careful selection, the grapes are left to ferment spontaneously in open truncated cone-shaped vats. There are 27 of these wooden fermenters and each one is treated separately. “Each one is like a child,” Luca elaborates. “Each one has its own story, and you have to share time with them every day during the fermentation.”
Especially as there is no temperature control.
“Definitely we have to be there, we have to check, we have to be sure that nothing is going off,” he continues. “But, as much as we can, we let the wines be as – yes, let’s use this abused term – as natural as we can in the sense of respect of the terroir because the terroir of Grattamacco is something really unique.”
The other hallmarks of the winemaking are manual punchdowns, gentle maceration, ageing in oak barrels (for at least 18 months) and plenty of resting time in bottles (at least 12 months).


As the wines are poured, Luca, who is also responsible for the group’s Collemassari, Poggio di Sotto and San Giorgio wines, sums up the philosophy: “Spontaneous fermentation without any control – any control of temperatures, any control of the yeasts, any control of the timing. We’re in control of the maceration with this soft punching. But we leave the grapes to express the authentic flavour of the terroir.”

The crucial decisions

When Grattamacco was established in 1977, it was the second winery in what would become one of the world’s most prestigious wine zones.
The first Grattamacco wine came from the 1982 vintage. The early years are represented in the vertical tasting by the 1991 vintage.
It is a Vino da Tavola di Castagneto comprising 50% Cabernet Sauvignon and 50% Sangiovese. Luca, who started at the winery as assistant winemaker in 2003, explains these are the proportions in the first 3ha vineyard.
The grapes were picked in the final week of September and produced a wine with 12.5% alcohol. The Cabernet Sauvignon was fermented – as now – in 700L open-top oak vats, while the Sangiovese was fermented in concrete vats and stainless steel. The wine was aged for 12 months in oak barrels.

The significant changes that were made to improve the quality of this red blend included:

• Adding Merlot to the blend (planted in 1989);
• Reducing the yields of the Sangiovese;
• Converting to organic farming at the end of the 1990s.

Adding Merlot

The percentage of Sangiovese in the wine decreased significantly as the Merlot came on stream. But Grattamacco is still one of the few producers in the region to include Sangiovese in its Bolgheri Superiore blend.
Luca reflects: “In the 90s and early this century, the climate of Bolgheri was much more suitable for expressing Merlot. So, it was a duty to introduce Merlot in a blend at the time. And definitely Cabernet Sauvignon is the most sensitive in this terroir and increased in the blend.”
The 1995 vintage, tasted next, is the one that marks the entrance of Merlot into the cuvée, replacing a portion of Sangiovese, while Cabernet Sauvignon increased its predominance. The 1995 Bolgheri Rosso Superiore is a blend of 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, and 15% Sangiovese.
It’s the composition that has persisted for nearly 30 years. But Luca admits it reflects the ratio of plantings and some years, for example, the Merlot component may be more like 18%.
The Cabernet was fermented in oak vats, while the Sangiovese and Merlot went into concrete vats and stainless-steel tanks. The wine matured for 12 months in oak barrels.
Again, the alcohol was 12.5%.

Managing wet Septembers

By 2006, the same percentages of varieties were harvested in early to mid-September, producing a wine with 13.5% alcohol. “That, today, is a dream,” Luca (below) sighs. 2006 was the last vintage with 13.5% alcohol.


Luca remembers this vintage being the year they learned how to manage a rainy mid-September.
“The grapes were on the edge of ripeness at the end of August,” he recalls. The Merlot was picked without any problem in early September but then it rained.
“For me, it was the first time that I experienced something like that, but then we realised that if we manage well the canopy by pulling the leaves off and give the grapes time to regain the right concentration (after the rain) and, at the same time, have a longer, slow ripening of the tannins, and if the weather remains good for you, you can have fantastic fruits and this is what happened in 2006.”
After arriving at Grattamacco on the 27th of August 2003, when the harvest was already under way, until the 2006 vintage, the main changes were:

• Paying “deeper attention to the different blocks”;
• Making more pickings from the same block to get grapes with “perfect ripeness”;
• Reducing yields and being more selective. Before 2004, the production of the Bolgheri Superiore was double that of the second wine, Bolgheri Rosso. After 2004, it was the other way around. “It meant that we dedicated more attention to the best fruits – that’s the core of what we have done,” he says. “And at the same time, we were looking for something that could increase the production but not change any of this philosophy and style and this, in the end, was Cassavecchia.”

Casavecchia is the new frontier of Bolgheri, a vine-covered oasis surrounded by forests, in the high hills north of Castagneto Carducci.
Grattamacco was one of the first wineries in Bolgheri to recognise the potential of Casavecchia and to plant new vineyards in this area as early as 1998. The location’s elevation, proximity to the woods and soil composition (a mix of white clays and sandy quartz) enables Grattamacco to grow a wide variety of grapes here which contribute freshness, balance, power and expressiveness to the blend without the excessive alcohol that is increasingly found in grapes from coastal areas.
Casavecchia has also proved an ideal home for Sangiovese, which acquires a distinctive freshness here that enhances its character.
“Here, we can achieve some Sangiovese with the dignity and integrity to be aboard the superiore and to maintain this heritage,” Luca states.
Grattamacco’s 10ha organic vineyard in Casavecchia now produces about 50% of the grapes for the Bolgheri Rosso Superiore.

Using open vats

2008 was a very long harvest, finishing in mid-October, like it did in the 1970s and 1980s. Luca describes it as “a vintage of ancient flavours”. In 2009, harvesting of the Merlot and Sangiovese started in the final days of August. Rains in mid-September brought relief to Cabernet, which was harvested in mid-October.
While tasting the 2008 and 2009, we discuss the role of open vats. Luca likes the smaller (700L) size, which means he doesn’t have to control the temperature. “With this volume, we can have a very low starting of fermentation at the right temperature; the right temperature for us is about 18 to 22 degrees. It means that we can we pick these grapes early in the morning, so we don’t have any problem with hot grapes. And then we let them start very, very slowly. So, the increase in temperature is never so high, and we can have a very long fermentation. As long as we have CO2, we can keep the skins together in an open environment and the extraction is never too harsh, because the temperatures never reach a point that otherwise could be a problem.”
It also enables them to use soft manual punchdowns.
Luca adds: “It’s not the best medium, it’s not the worst medium – it is our medium. It is something that by experience we have seen can have an impact on the identity of this wine.” It’s a constant, too, “despite the differentiation of the vintages and of the blends”.
In good vintages, when they quickly fill up these open vats, they also ferment in concrete and steel. “But in this case – in special vintages like 2009 – we can add a touch of identity of the cellar of Grattamacco. There is a method that we use in this kind of situation – when we are very confident that the skins can be in maceration for months – and what we do is this method called piemontesina.”
This means, when the fermentation on skins is nearly over, the tanks are topped up rather than drained, leaving the skins in contact with the wine for several additional months. When they first did it, in 2004, they left the skins in the tank until July 1 the following year. But with the Bolgheri Superiore 2021 the maceration time was less than two months.
They also used this technique in a couple of tanks in 2016.
Luca says the downside of piemontesina is that you lose some colour (although that’s not a problem at Grattamacco) and it’s risky. “You can have a spoilage with the skins inside the wine, so you have to be there every day tasting and decide if the malo is gone or not. After the malo, it’s more tranquilo.”

Indigenous yeasts

The 2012 wine prompts a discussion on indigenous yeasts. As Grattamacco was rebuilding its cellar, they had to use a “factory room” for the fermentation and Luca and the winemaking team were concerned about the potential lack of yeasts in the new space.
“We decided to ferment the first Merlot that we picked in a stainless-steel tank – 100hl – just to see what happened. There was a moment in this fermentation when the density was very low, so we could assume the wine was dry, but we had this really sweet sensation in the mouth. So, we put the wine into analysis (they normally rely on their palates), and the wine was 15% alcohol, dry but so sweet.”
He adds: “We realised in that moment what is the strength of the fungi, of the flora, that we have in our vineyards.”
They now use this tank as a kind of pied de cuve to seed all the open-top vats.

Acidity

The 2016 prompts a discussion about acidifying. It’s something Luca tries to avoid.
He says: “What we try to do with acidity, we try to adjust with early harvest. The main work is made in the vineyard. So, when you have some situation where you can have a dilution of concentration, what we try to do, for example, is to decrease the green harvest in the sense that you can distribute the water supply in more bunches. And then maybe we can have a later harvest. This was, for example, what we did in 2016 and was probably one of the best decisions we ever made for winemaking because it was a bold decision because you are betting that you will not have more rains.”
If he had to add acidity, he would rather do it at the blending stage.

Ageing in oak

While still tasting the 2016, the discussion moves to ageing in oak.
Luca reveals: “We age the wines more or less 18 months. What we do now is go to the barrique later than usual. We will usually go into the barrique in February rather than after the fermentation because we like to wait. There are different reasons, one is more rational in the sense that we like to wait for the end of the harvest to decide how many barrels we need. And also the type that we would need based on the wines that we have produced (that vintage). The irrational or emotional reason is that we like to maintain the wine in its purity without the oak as long as we can during the winter so it can clean naturally.
“Good things take time.”
The clean wine then goes to barrels, requiring fewer rackings during the ageing process.
New oak now accounts for about a third of the barrels. The other two-thirds are a maximum of two or three years old. All the barrels come from French cooper Taransaud.

Shorter macerations

The final wine in the vertical tasting is the current release, from the 2021 vintage. The alcohol has crept up to 14.5% but most of the winemaking is familiar.
The grapes were harvested by hand and meticulously selected, as usual. Fermentation was in the usual small, open oak vats, with gentle manual punching-down and a slow extraction of tannins.
Luca notes: “Fermentation proceeded briskly, with maceration in contact with the skins lasting for up to two weeks at most, except for the final batch of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. With these, we extended the maceration period and even employed the piemontesina technique on two lots, with the last pressing taking place on November 24th and the resulting juice incorporated into the final blend. This ancient method endows a delightful silkiness to the wine by allowing the skins to reabsorb some tannins. Being able to utilise this technique speaks volumes about the exceptional quality of the fruit harvested in this vintage, as such prolonged contact with the skins requires grapes of exceptional quality.”
However, generally, the length of maceration has decreased. “Ten years ago, the average maceration was three or four weeks. Now, the average maceration could be two or three weeks except for the piemontesinas,” Luca says.
I wonder what happens to the pressed juice from the piemontesinas. Luca says they usually keep the first pressing and blend it in with the free-run.
They keep the rest separate and decide what to do with it after ageing. Usually, it goes into the second wine, Bolgheri Rosso. Regarding this second wine, Luca stresses it’s not second in quality, “it’s just a readiness for the quality”.
Bolgheri Rosso is an everyday wine created to promote the name of the appellation. The blend consists of all the grape varieties on the estate: Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Sangiovese. These come from a selection of the younger vines, a first harvest of the older ones, and about 20% of the Cabernet Sauvignon from the superiore wine. Fermentation takes place in steel vats, where part of the wine undergoes ageing, while another portion continues for eight months in barriques. The result is an easy-to-drink wine, with a distinct flavour and pronounced character, in which Bolgheri’s Mediterranean expression is supported by the typical freshness of the Grattamacco hills.
Eight wines later, I fully appreciate why the Grattamacco Bolgheri Rosso Superiore is such a special red wine. It’s the combination of a special terroir and artisanal winemaking and keeping a significant proportion of Sangiovese in the blend, in line with a Tuscan tradition that is almost lost.