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Poggio Scalette winery was founded in 1991, when the oenologist Vittorio Fiore and his wife Adriana Assjè di Marcorà bought a rustic building with some plots of land on the hill of Ruffoli, between Greve in Chianti and Panzano. This area is unanimously considered one of the best available for the cultivation of vines and olives, in the heart of the Chianti Classico production area.

In 1996, the company acquired some other properties, thus bringing its total extension to some 86 acres: 37 for vineyards, 24.7 for olive groves, 5 for different cultivations, 12 for woodlands, and the remaining ones for buildings or open spaces.

The vineyards and olive groves of Podere Poggio Scalette are located on a strip of land that extends between 1.148 and 1.804 ft above sea level. The name “Scalette” comes, in fact, from the very structure of those hilly slopes (“Scalette” means “small stairs”).
Wonderful dry-stone walls thus support terraces of all sizes, on which vines and olive trees alternate according to the different features of the soil; these works of peasant wisdom look like a series of small stairs in the distance as if they were built to climb the slopes of Ruffoli hill.

On these terraces and on a large plot called “Il Carbonaione”, there are Sangiovese vines which were planted in the decade following the end of WWI and after the destruction of most of the European vines by phylloxera, towards the end of 1800.
These vines, which have reached the age of more than 80 years, are one of the rare examples of Tuscan vineyards of this age. They mainly an important member of the great Sangiovese family – “Sangiovese di Lamole” – which originated in the very Chianti Classico area.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)