Italiano
A princely return to the future
Rome is a beautiful and warm city where it is not unusual to have summer-like days in the middle of autumn. It was a day like this that owner Alessandrojacopo Bomcompagni Ludovisi welcomed me at Tenuta di Fiorano. Before we look at his excellent wines, allow me to tell you something about this splendid 200-hectare estate that has always practiced organic farming, even before people knew what it was.
There are not that many hectares of vineyards and they are expanding at an excruciatingly slow pace, one which Alessandrojacopo picked up from his uncle and father and is consistent with his self-appointed role as custodian of the estate rather than just its owner. Another owner would have developed the land much more aggressively. This is not to say that this is bad, only that modernity has accustomed us to different rhythms, whereas here it is like being inside a space-time bubble.
Alessandrojacopo’s uncle made the Tenuta famous around in the 1950s by producing wines that still today are extraordinary and those who have never been able to taste them will have to be content with their legends. Then, unexplainably, his uncle uprooted his vineyards and stopped making wine. It was only some years later that Alessandrojacopo was able to convince his uncle to let him try to produce wine and he planted new vines: the same as before for the reds but different varieties for the whites. All this according to his uncle’s dictates.
Today the estate produces a stock red and white wine as well as a more select red and white. All the wines are, in my opinion, distinctly Mediterranean and thus exquisitely territorial. The methods, pace and even some of the people involved in making the wines are the same now as then, while the enologist is Lorenzo Costantini. And if some measured changes have been made to the wine we will only see this with time. I spoke at length with Alessandrojacopo, an excellent host, and I got the feeling he has a hidden desire to once again make a white using Semillon, the grape that produced the legendary wine of years gone by. We will have to wait and see.
