Vacation of a Lifetime!
As seen in Main Street Magazine
Tilly Rivers
Every now and again you stumble upon a great wine. The treasure hunter in me loves this and it fills me full of glee. This treasure is not only a spectacular treat for the palate but the story behind the winemaker is even more interesting. Clifford and Donna Meneghetti Weaver own and operate Le Miccine Winery near the geographic center of Tuscany's Chianti Classico wine region. Recently I had a chance to enjoy a glass of their Don Alberto Chianti Classico Riserva and talk with Donna.
MSM: Describe ideal characteristics of Chianti “Don Alberto” (or your choice of featured wine.)
LM: Our Chianti Classico Riserva “Don Alberto” is made only in good years, and it may vary a bit from year to year—some years, it may be 100% Sangiovese; in other years, we may add a bit of Merlot to add complexity and color. It is always a deep, dark garnet red color. The nose is amazingly generous and expressive, with gobs of ripe and sun dried berries, tar, cherry, black currants, and blackberry with accents of vanilla, mineral, earth, and sweet oak. The palate echoes the nose offering waves of fruit, herbs, earth, mineral, tart fruits, and sweet oak influences. A recent reviewer called it “A postcard of the region in a glass,” a comment about which we are very proud.
MSM: Do you have any winery traditions, crush traditions or events that you are particularly fond of?
LM: A tradition at Le Miccine is a post-harvest celebration meal that my husband and I prepare and serve to our harvest workers. We usually dine al fresco on tables spread on our tasting room terrace. The meal goes on for hours, with lots of good wine to wash it down!
MSM: What are some practices in the vineyard and in the winery which set you apart or which you are particularly proud of?
LM: Having known absolutely nothing about viticulture or viniculture, my husband and I knew that we needed expert advice, and one of the first things we did was to hire a world-class agronomist to help educate us as to what had to happen in the field. Dr. Remigio Bordini hails from the University of Bologna. Although at the time we hired him, he spoke no English, the University of California at Davis (the premiere U. S. wine program) awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions to viticulture. Dr. Bordini had been perfecting a trellis system in his work in Emilia-Romagna, and, after we tore out old vineyards and regraded the fields, we were the first farm in Chianti to work with this new system. Dr. Bordini is still our consulting agronomist, and we continue to learn from his every visit.
With Bordini on board, we needed to turn our attention to the winery. Our research into the appropriate person to hire as a consulting enologist was actually fun! We purchased a bottle of Chianti Classico from every farm we could find and began our “research.” If we liked a wine, we set the empty bottle on a shelf—if we didn’t like the wine, we tossed it. When we finished that phase of our “research,” we turned to the book of producers put out by the Consorzio Chianti Classico to find the name of the enologist.
Now, 13 years into the venture, we can’t remember if ALL of the wines we liked were produced by Vittorio Fiore, or only most of them, but we knew that we had found the person we wanted to be our winemaker. Unfortunately, he said that he wasn’t taking on any more farms and he turned us down! We never anticipated that we couldn’t hire him, and we had no back-up plan. Fortunately, Dr. Bordini agreed to intervene and he convinced Fiore that what was going on in our fields was so exciting that Fiore would want to be a part of it. Fiore agreed to interview us, and interview he did—about three hours of grilling us on what kind of wine we wanted to make, etc. At the end, he agreed to work with us, and we had a great team to teach us how to grow wonderful grapes and how to make lovely wines.
MSM: What inspired LeMiccine?
MSM: What inspired LeMiccine?
LM: Purchasing Le Miccine was not something we set out to do. We set out to purchase a small vacation home in Italy, thinking that we could use it as a base for seeing other parts of Italy and then move on to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, etc. But, the more time we spent looking for this vacation home, the more we came to understand that we would never be part of a community unless we were more invested in the community. So, we changed our goal and decided to search for well-sited vineyards instead of the small vacation home.
Having been looking at property for about three years, we had met many people who were wonderful in offering their help in our search. We can still remember driving around a curve with the estate agent who showed us Le Miccine—he said “there it is” and pointed off to the left. There, sitting in the middle of its vineyards like something cradled in nurturing hands was the house. We knew we were done looking.
MSM: “Because it is their home, the Weavers have restored, furnished, equipped, and landscaped Le Miccine to aesthetic and functional standards not found in more typical Tuscan rental properties.”-- What are the “Non typical” features?
LM: When we purchased Le Miccine, the residence looked quite similar to the way it looks today; the 1700s exterior is historically protected, so there could be no changes there. The residence had been used as a summer home by previous owners, and they must have found it to be adequate, but we wanted heat in the winter, ample hot water, and sufficient electricity, so the house was gutted to provide them.
Throughout the countryside in Italy, water comes from wells and, should the electricity go out, the pumps don’t work—even if you’re fully lathered in the shower! We didn’t think that would work for us, or for the guests we decided that we’d rent to, so we had a 10,000 liter cistern buried at the top of our hill and the water feeds the residence by gravity; there’s water even when there is no electricity.
Most residences in Italy have 3 “somethings” of electricity—I forget what it’s called—but you cannot have the oven on and a reading light, or the dishwasher and a hairdryer. We upgraded to 15 “somethings,” an upgrade that is permitted because we are a farm, not just a house (electricity is rationed in Italy). We have seen many rental homes in Italy that were purchased and outfitted just for people who are there for one week and probably mostly out touring, but, because we live there about 5 months a year, our apartments are outfitted for the way we live—comfortable mattresses, soft upholstered pieces, lovely Tuscan antiques, and kitchens fully-stocked for cooking.
Le Miccine's production is currently limited to approximately 1,500 cases per year. Explain the quality process that makes LeMiccine wines stand out from the others. Early on at Le Miccine, we decided to make only wines we could be proud of—after all, our names appear on every bottle! We immediately set about severely restricting yield through “green harvest,” a process in which bunches of grapes are cut off and tossed on the ground so that the vines can give all of their energy to ripening the remaining bunches.
Frankly, it hurts to cut off bunches of grapes and toss them away. The tradition in the Chianti was to produce quantity and not to worry about quality, and we knew that we were sacrificing the grapes that would bring us immediate income for the wine that we hoped would bring us a well-deserved, even if much-delayed, reputation. We have always worked with a small harvest crew that we train to leave bunches that are not fully ripe or that may be damaged by mold on the vine, because we just don’t like the wine that comes from unripe grapes or the chemical treatment that is essential when there’s mold; instead, we’ve offered the grapes we leave on the vine to neighbors who happily come to “glean” our fields and make wine for their own use.
MSM: How did two American’s manage to produce award winning “Italian” wines?
LM:It’s not just two Americans—we’re a multi-cultural endeavor! Our farm is managed by a German woman and our two full-time field and cellar employees are Romanian. We do have a part-time tractor driver and a part-time field worker who are Italian, so maybe they’re our lucky charms. In reality, we produce award-winning Italian wines (we’re listed in Luca Maroni’s Best 500 Italian Wineries) because we want to be award-winning! We are fully involved in every step of the grape growing and winemaking; we’ve hired terrific consultants; and we think our employees are the best in the region. Everybody involved in Le Miccine thinks of it as “their farm,” and they all want it to be the best.
MSM:Please tell me your personal history, purpose and love of LeMiccine.
LM: My previous work wasn’t even vaguely similar to grape growing and winemaking. I was the Dean of a College of Management and Business at a University and the chief executive officer of one of their major campuses. My husband was a practicing attorney with his own firm. Both of us were very successful in those roles, but there must have been a little piece of both of us that wanted to do something other than push paper. Le Miccine has used every skill set we have, and some that we didn’t have! Neither of us knew much about wine and neither of us spoke Italian. But, panic is a great motivator, so we just dug in and started learning everything we could. There is something incredibly satisfying about seeing a plan through from beginning to end.
We just finished the vineyard plan that we conceived in 1997, shortly after we purchased Le Miccine—beginning in 1998, we removed about 1/3 of our vineyards every three or four years, had the land recontoured, and replanted better clones of vines with Bordini’s trellis system. The last phase was just completed earlier this year when we were in residence. We can now see what we could only commit to paper back in 1997, and it’s thrilling. When all of our fields are in full production in 2012, we’ll be producing approximately 4,500 cases per year—and we expect it will be award-winning wine. “. . . wines notable for a strong personality that makes them the perfect ambassadors of their region.” -- Gambero Rosso
Le Miccine’s wines can be found at fine restaurants throughout Ontario or directly through Tre Amici Imports http://www.treamiciimwines.com/.
For the experience of a lifetime book a Tuscan holiday at their Wine Estate. For more information visit http://www.lemiccine.com/.
