History

Countryside estate “In Nomine Domini, Amen”. Thus, following the custom of the time, starts the contract drawn up on the 23rd of May by Sebastiano del Caccia and Niccola di Andrea Capponi, by which the former sold Villa Calcinaia to the Capponi family and it has been their country abode ever since. The Capponis must have liked the place, considering that at about the middle of the XVI century Calcinaia was considered important enough to deserve to be depicted in the maps of the Captains of the Guelph Party. The original four poderi of 1524 – Sepale, Calcinaia, San Piero al Pino and Bastignano – were increased in number through the years: Casarsa, in 1643 and the rest during the following two centuries. Calcinaia remained a simple country house until the second-half of the eighteenth century, when Count Ferdinando Carlo Capponi, a first-class administrator, decided to reorganise his property in the Greve valley. To this period date back the fermentation cellar, the cellars proper, the lemon house, and the rear section  of the Villa. The front had already been refurbished some fifty years before, thanks to Count Ferrante Capponi who also added the chapel. The estate comprises a little over 200 hectares of woodland, pastureland, vineyards and olive groves. The wines obtained from those vineyards have been internationally recognised, praised and enjoyed since the beginning of the 20th century. However, the products of Villa Calcinaia were already known since the 16th century, as proven by documents in the family archive. The Capponi have continuously over the past 50 years been investing in their wine making in order to improve the quality at the same time bearing in mind the ties of the terroir and its respected traditions. The Chianti Classico of Villa Calcinaia is the truest expression of a family’s pride and sense of history.