The call of the earth

I could find no other words to describe the turning point of summer 2000.
It was a clear summer Sunday and I, fresh from a degree in Economics and Commerce in Siena, just had to decide what to do with the time finally available.
There is no time to say it and here I am going home to Montauto, at km 10 of Campigliola.
The harvest was approaching and I, who up to that moment had participated in it more for pleasure than for genuine interest, decide to take part in it and, why not, also to participate in the delicate moment of winemaking
The Montauto company has been part of my family for more than 60 years. It was my grandfather Enos who planted the first Sauvignon Blanc vineyards as early as the 1980s. He had intuition or, more properly, what the Latins call genius loci , and although little was known about traditional zoning, exposures and vines, the fact that Montauto was only 10 km as the crow flies from the sea of ​​Capalbio must have already indicated to him then, the enological path to follow: that of whites.
Returning to that summer, I was walking with a friend who was also an oenologist among the old vines of Sauvignon now lavish with turned bunches of grapes when the intense scent that the grapes emanated hit our nostrils. Few people know, in this regard, that even just touching them during the harvest, the bunches of Sauvignon perfume the hands in a way that is as insistent as it is delicious.
It was that perfume that persuaded me to return home and dedicate my life to the wine and red earth of Montauto.
After all, the premises were the most encouraging: the composition of the soil, clayey and rich in shining minerals such as quartz, the proximity to the sea, whose breezes gild the grapes and cool them in summer and finally the wind, which blows here and dries the grapes, they made and still make this an ideal territory for the production of white wines.
To man – to myself, in this case – the task of making them “great” and, in doing so, of transforming the territory into terroir .
So I imagined and gradually implemented a company policy that I still like to define as “small steps”. One step at a time, I composed the cellar, bought the crusher-destemmer, the steel and wooden vats, I imagined a tasting room and planted new vines and, over the years, the sense of thrift has allowed me to create a healthy company, capable of supporting itself and of speaking, through its wines, to its customers. Worldwide.