A heartfelt remembrance of winemaker Gabriella Tani

Last month winemaker Gabriella Tani left this land, quietly, in total solitude and with the grace that has always marked her life. She is remembered by a producer friend who prefers to remain anonymous, but who wants to pay tribute to this figure who gave so much to Tuscan enology and who cannot disappear in indifference and collective silence.
"Gabriella Tani has left us, a bad disease took her away at the age of 64 depriving all of us of a very talented agronomist winemaker and me, of a great and sincere friend. Gabriella left on tiptoe, without fuss, in a reserved manner, as reserved was her whole life, personal and professional. Never out of place, always discreet she collaborated with me since the birth of my winery 30 years ago. For me, then a young inexperienced producer, she represented the erudite, practical, down-to-earth alter ego. An indispensable figure in achieving the goals I had set for myself, and I owe so much to her.
A pupil of Vittorio Fiore, another great Chianti agronomist and oenologist, she managed over time with great patience to manage my impetuous enthusiasm through rigor and practicality, but without ever using forcing or dogma, always circumstantiating procedures and oenological interventions as befits the "Consultant" who is a master of the subject not only because he has studied it, but because he has deeply understood it. A graduate in Agricultural Sciences with a master's degree in oenology from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Piacenza, Gabriella Tani in 1993 began working with my company, which, apart from great enthusiasm and determined will, did not possess great means. Gabriella never made it a burden, she had the ability to achieve so much with little because of her mastery of the material for that innate sensibility for balanced and elegant wines that allowed her to tame the aggressiveness of Sangiovese giving it pleasantness and softness without necessarily using technological means or sophisticated processes, relying solely on rigor in the vineyard and expertise in the cellar; with his professionalism, but above all with his passion, he laid the foundations to finally tame Sangiovese by giving the elegance that was due to one of the noblest and most complex grape varieties of our great country; an indispensable premise for me, a neophyte in this wonderful profession, to do things right and get the desired results.
She collaborated with me until 2013, when exhausted by a world, the oenological one, which had become too presentialist and often self-referential, she retired in good order to a small village in Brittany, but without ever abandoning her great passion for her beloved Tuscan Chianti Classico.no for this, trying her hand at divulging and enhancing the quality of Sangiovese and of that wine that most of all embodies its essence and typicality: the
I miss you so much Gabriella, as a friend and as an oenologist, but I am sure that Tuscan oenology will miss you so much as well, for your class, for the refined way you had of understanding one of the most important and oldest wines in the world, doing justice to a grape variety, Sangiovese, that even though it is the soul of the oldest and most important appellation, Chianti Classico, with your talent you have contributed so much to enhance and make appreciated in the world.
May the earth be light to you my friend."
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)