Soldera IGT Sangiovese 2014

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

A Tribute to Gianfranco from the Family

Our father passed away on 16th February 2019. We would like to thank everyone for their show of affection, esteem and gratitude for father and his works. Everything our father did to build up the winery, thanks to his principles and founding values, will always live on in our commitment. The excellence of the product according to nature, the valorisation of the ecosystem and garden at Case Basse, investments in research and innovation and the support given to young researchers are all part of the winery’s DNA and will be carried on in the future with a renewed passion. 

Monica and Mauro with our mother Graziella, together with Paolo and Valeria.

Soldera’s 100% Sangiovese from Azienda Agricola Case Basse, had been on my wishlist for some time. A visit from a good friend became the catalyst for that wish to come true. You know who you are, thank you! Over five hours drinking a bottle of 2009 was a chameleon, changing with every sniff. One of the hallmarks of great wine is its ability to draw you into the glass, they almost speak out to you … Drink Me! Drink Me!

Gianfranco Soldera’s Sangiovese is an incredible wine, you almost don’t have to drink it. The aroma is just that good. Drinking a bottle of 2009 over  5 hours was like watching a chameleon, changing with every sniff. Incredible complexity, layering, beautifully refined, perfectly developed, yet youthful. This wine has a level of precision that you rarely see. I can see why others have picked Grand Cru Burgundy as an option in blind tastings. Incredibly sophisticated, yet with such divine lingering flavours. Hopefully, I’ll see another bottle in the glass soon!

This wine has historically been labelled Brunello di Montalcino Riserva, a difference of philosophical opinion saw Gianfranco leave the Consorzio, preferring to label his wine as Toscan Sangiovese IGT (Indicazioni Geographica Typica). The wine speaks for itself!

About Soldera

Dedication to Exceptional Quality

Gianfranco and Graziella Soldera have conceived a project based on two deep-felt beliefs:

1. Quality production needs a complex ecosystem that makes up the ideal habitat for natural cultivation,

2. Past experience must be compared with innovation born from research. The culture of the past, i.e. from insight and developed by farming experience, must be respected but also rationally included and verified with the most modern experimentation techniques.

Thus Nature and its laws can be complied with, in order to express the maximum potential and avoid exploiting the soil and crops.

An article in The World of Fine Wine “Soldera: The Great Outsider” explores the estate’s history and philosophy in great depth and is worth a read.

Soldera’s website shares great insight into Gianfranco’s deep thought, desire to back it with science, at the same time as applying a very human touch made gentle by years of experience. His column share insights of the day to day workings at Soldera is particularly illuminating.

In a nutshell, it comes down to a few simple things. Gianfranco’s vineyards are in a great spot, they are cared for with precision and the resultant fruit is of exceptional quality.

To age his wines for 5 years in a barrel is a testament to the quality of fruit. He places no limits on mentoring exceptional wine all the way to the bottle.

The wines have incredible purity and harmony.

Balancing Science, Nature & Touch

Coming from a non-wine related background, the approach Gianfranco has taken has blended science with touch. Critical elements of the environment, vineyard, microflora, winery process literally being put under the microscope. The purpose not to make technical wine, but, to prevent issues by having an in-depth scientific understanding thereby avoiding the use of technology to fix problems.

He initiated The Soldera Award, to support young research all over the world investigating critical aspects of wine production, such is the extent to which he believes in understanding the science of grapes and wine.

A Great Wine – By Gianfranco Soldera

You can tell a great wine by its harmony, elegance, complexity and naturalness.

This means balance and proportion, refinement and manifold sensation of aroma and taste. It means using mature, healthy grapes, transformed naturally into alcohol, following their natural process, with no chemical products or colouring added.

A great wine gives satisfaction, a sense of well-being, the desire to drink it again; it creates and increases conviviality and friendship. It is unique, rare, typical and long-lived. In it you can recognize its micro-territory, the vineyard it hails from. The wine from the Instistieti cru, for example, is different from the wine that comes from the Case Basse vineyard although no distance at all separates them.

A great wine cannot be substituted, because it has unique features, like any work of art. I sold not one bottle of  1989 vintage because I did consider it up to my usual high standards of quality.

A great wine is rare, the tip of the pyramid of around 20 billion bottles produced around the world every year. No more than 50 or 60 thousand of them will ever reach the top.

A great wine is long-lived: it must improve, at least in the first twenty years, and give different sensation as time passes. It is the only natural food product that has a longer life-span than a man’s.

All these features raise the production costs considerably – and the price – of a great wine. But any product which has similar worth is never going to come cheap. Beauty and excellence take time, experience and large investments.

I produce an average of 15 thousand bottles a year. But I drastically reduce that number if, because of bad weather condition during the season, the grape harvest is not up to scratch. Out of 30 vintages, 27 have been excellent: a record. The best of the lot, historic, is 1979’s.

Wine is however and always will be subjectivity: the same bottle can be worth 500 euros to one person and not even  1 euro to another.

Gianfranco Soldera

The 2014 Vintage

This difficult vintage has taught me a lot and I would like to thank Professor Bruno Bagnoli, entomologist from the Università della Tuscia and Professor Daniele Trinchero of the Politecnico di Torino, who have started collaborating with Case Basse this year, joining our other friends, Professors Luigi Bavaresco, Mauro Cresti, Mario Fregoni, Lorenzo Genesio, Luigi Odello, Sauro Simoni, Giuseppe Surico, Rita Vignani, Massimo Vincenzini and the engineer Luciano Ardingo – President of SPEE, who is collecting all the studies together in Case Basse’s intelligent network.

One evening at dinner, a friend asked me, “How is it possible that with all this research you’ve been carrying out for so many years, you still can’t solve the problem of such bad seasons?” I replied that it’s very difficult to make a natural wine with only grapes from my vineyards, without any kind of help in the cellar, and this requires continual research in different fields; I’m sure that if I didn’t know what I do today, this year I would have made a wine like the 1989 vintage, the only one I never sold; therefore I’m very happy to be able to say that there will be very little of the 2014, but it will be excellent quantity, thanks to the continuous research done by our professor friends at Case Basse.
From the magazine “Oinos” – by  Gianfranco Soldera

Meteorological characteristics of 2014 vintage: during the period between blooming and harvest, of a total duration of 129 days, the weather station in the farm recorded the data shown in the graph below (the longitudinal dotted line represents the beginning of grape veraison). Compared to the company’s historical average, it was a vine-growing season in which the Bloom-Veraison phase, lasting 67 days, was characterized by lower temperatures and by a quite higher rainfall value, whereas the Veraison-Harvest phase, of a duration of 62 days, was characterized by lower temperatures and higher rainfall.

Information on the 2014 Case Basse by the Soldera family:

Toscana Indicazione Geografica Protetta

Soldera® Case Basse® – 100% Sangiovese – Vintage 2014

The wine has been produced in 8421 bottles of 0.750 L and 762 bottles of 1.5 L all numbered.
The wine history through the studies carried out by FoodMicroTeam, Spin-Off of the University of Florence (Prof. Massimo Vincenzini)
The bottle of the wine “Toscana IGP – Soldera 100% Sangiovese – Vintage 2014”
Bordelaise bottle, “special series 15 Soldera® Case Basse®”, designed in the early 80s by researchers and by the President of the Nord Vetri factory, Mr. Franco Marchini, in order to obtain:
1. Weight of 750 grams for maximum insulation.
2. Antique green color, more resistant against ultraviolet rays.
3. Accentuated cavity, for a better sedimentation (always unfiltered wine).
4. Inner neck of the bottles made as suggested by Prof. Antonio Pes, with an optimum ratio between the weight of the cork and the bottle neck volume to be saturated.

The wine Sangiovese 100% and its sensory profile
The anthocyanin profile of the wine is completely consistent with the profile of a wine produced only with Sangiovese grapes, being characterized by the absence of acetylated and cumarylated anthocyanins (Mangani et al., Am. J. Enol. Vitic., 62: 487-494, 2011).
[Dp-3G= delphinidin-3-glucoside; Cy-3G= cyanidin-3- glucoside; Pt-3G= petunidin-3-glucoside; Pn-3G= peonidin-3- glucoside; Mv-3G= malvidin-3-glucoside; VitA = Vitisin A; Acetylates = sums of acetylated anthocyanins; Cumarylates = sums of cumarylated anthocyanins]. 0,0 10,0 20,0 30,0 Dp-3G Cy-3G Pt-3G Pn-3G Mv-3G/2 Vit-A Acetylated CoumarylatedThe sensory profile of the wine was assessed with Advanced Big Sensory Test by the Centro Studi Assaggiatori di Brescia (Prof. Luigi Odello).

The wine presents a vivid garnet red colour and a noticeable aroma intensity; a gentle structure with a good acidity; a clear fruity aroma of red fruits, followed by notes of aromatic and balsamic herbs and specific flowers, with a spicy and toasted perception. 0123456789 Color saturation Violet reflection Garnet reflections Olfactory intensity Spherical percepion Structure AcidAlcohol Bitterness Astringency Specific flowers Various flowers Honey Floral Citrus Reds and blacks fruits Bright fruits with stones Various fresh fruits Dried fruits Nuts Cooked fruits Fruity Fresh vegetal Pot herbs Balsamic Dried vegetal Underbrush Vegetal Spices Wood Confectionery Roast Spicy Animal Oxidised Microbiological Empyreumatic Various organic/chemicals Persistence

Harvest: carried out on September 30th, on the basis of organoleptic evaluations and physical-chemical indicators of grape ripeness, taking into account both technological (sugars, acidity and pH) and phenol maturity parameters (potential and extractable anthocyanins, polyphenol index, seed maturity).

Grapes: exclusively of the Sangiovese variety and in perfect health, as pointed out by the results of microbiological analysis weekly performed on grapes from August to harvesting.Selection of grape berries to undergo vinification: in the wine cellar, the harvested bunches were put on a table and subjected to a further selection by trained workers, then they were conveyed to a “vertical vibrating destemmer-sorter group, Socma Cube – Primec”. After a further visual selection, only healthy and unbroken grape berries were transferred into the vinification vats by means of a conveyor belt.

Alcoholic fermentation: spontaneous fermentation was carried out in truncated cone-shaped Slavonian oak vats, without using commercial yeast starter cultures and without temperature control. During the early stages of the fermentation process, the non-Saccharomyces yeast populations (Kloeckera apiculata and Starmerella bacillaris), usually present on grape berries, reached maximum values of 9 millions of cells per millilitre. On the third day of fermentation (alcohol = 3% v/v), the wine yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae became the predominant species, growing up to 91 millions cells/mL, and, hence, it continued regularly the wine fermentation until its completion.

Malolactic fermentation: spontaneous fermentation occurred after the end of the alcoholic fermentation and was completed within about 4 weeks. The dominant microbial species was Oenococcus oeni.

Ageing: carried out in Slavonian oak barrels for more than 4 years. Monthly performed chemical and microbiological analyses never found activities or microbial populations able to induce the onset of detectable defects.

Bottling: the wine, possessing chemical and microbiological stability, was bottled without any physical or chemical treatment (clarification and/or filtration).

Wine: at bottling, the wine contained sulphites amounting to 49 mg/L of total SO2 (of which 10 mg/L as free SO2), value much lower than the allowed maximum legal limit of 150 mg/L; Glucose and Fructose were absent, demonstrating a complete alcoholic fermentation; Glycerol, molecule which confers body and softness to the wine, was detected at a concentration of 10.0 g/L. Color quite ruby red with hints of garnet, perfectly consistent with that expected for a wine produced exclusively with Sangiovese grapes and subjected to a long ageing.
Authentication of the varietal composition of the wine, its genetic identity and its close link with the winery’s vineyards are assessed by the results of studies on molecular traceability of the wine (analysis of genomic DNA) carried out at the University of Siena (Dr. Rita Vignani).
Wine preservation: for an optimum maintenance, wine bottles should be kept upright, at temperatures of 12-16°C and humidity of at least 70%, avoiding sudden change of temperature and direct sun light.

Where in the World is Soldera?

Case Basse estate, in the Brunello subzone of Tavernelle, southwest of Montalcino itself. As Kerin O’Keefe explains in her Brunello di Montalcino: Understanding and Appreciating One of Italy’s Greatest Wines (2012), this area, especially around the small church of Santa Restituta [around which Gaja’s Brunello holdings are planted], has long been recognized as a source of outstanding Sangiovese:

“Averaging between 300 and 350m (984 and 1,148ft) above sea level, fresh nocturnal breezes cool down hot daytime temperatures during the growing season, generating aromas and complexity. The vineyards are also elevated far enough above damaging spring and autumn frost and fog, but when compared to higher areas are just low enough to enjoy warmer temperatures that guarantee more consistent ripening. In fact, most producers in this area feel they have the best of everything: perfect altitude combined with complex and predominantly rocky, well-draining soils as well as warmer temperatures.”

Drinking Soldera

I will simply make two points: 1. Do not drink it with too many people; 2. Make sure you reserve 8 hours to enjoy it!