The vision
In the early 1970s Gianfranco and Graziella Soldera came to Montalcino with a radical idea: let nature speak, without compromise. They planted Case Basse in a secluded, amphitheatre site ringed by forest, and farmed for biodiversity decades before organics were fashionable. No chemical shortcuts. No corrections. Just the vine, the place, and patience.
The terroir
The vineyards sit at around 320 metres on galestro schist and marl, with sharp day-to-night temperature swings and constant airflow off the surrounding woods. Yields are kept punishingly low. The forest, the gardens and the wildlife are part of the farm, not cleared from it.
In the cellar
Indigenous-yeast fermentation, long macerations, and years in large Slavonian oak botti. No barriques, no new-oak gloss, no early release for export taste. The wine is left to become itself.
Burgundian in finesse, unmistakably Tuscan in soul.
The wine
One Brunello, often of Riserva depth: wild cherry, rose petal, blood orange and forest floor, linear and mineral, with fine tannins and a long savoury finish. It rewards decades, the 1988, 1990, 1997, 2001, 2006 and 2010 are benchmarks.
Why collectors hold it
Tiny production, a cult following, and a proven thirty-year curve. When a former employee destroyed several vintages in the cellar in 2012, Soldera simply carried on, unbowed. Gianfranco passed in 2019; his family keeps the standard exactly as he set it.
To open a bottle of Case Basse is to taste a philosophy: a landscape, and a lifetime given to integrity.
