Case Basse di Gianfranco Soldera takes its name from the estate Gianfranco Soldera, a former insurance broker from Milan, purchased in 1972 in the hills southwest of Montalcino. He planted his first Sangiovese vines there in 1975, setting out to make a wine built on patience rather than yield, and spent the following decades turning a neglected property into one of Tuscany's most closely watched addresses.
The estate covers some 23 hectares at roughly 320 metres of elevation, though only a small part is under vine: two parcels, Case Basse and Intistieti, together planted to about 8 hectares of Sangiovese. Around the vines, Soldera and his wife Graziella, a botanist, built a deliberately biodiverse ecosystem, a rose garden of more than a thousand varieties, hives and nesting boxes for birds, meant to draw in the insects and predators that keep the vineyard healthy without pesticides or other chemical intervention. All work in the vineyard is done by hand.
In the cellar the approach is equally exacting. Fermentation takes place in large wooden vats with no temperature control and no selected yeasts, relying on the native microflora of the property. The wine then ages for years, often up to six, in large casks of Slavonian oak rather than the small French barriques common elsewhere in Tuscany, which Soldera considered a crutch for grapes that had not achieved full ripeness and character on their own.
Soldera was equally exacting about the label. After the 2008 investigation into undeclared blending among some Brunello di Montalcino producers, he broke publicly with the Consorzio del Brunello di Montalcino over what he saw as its reluctance to defend the appellation's integrity. From the 2006 vintage forward, the estate has labeled its wine as Toscana IGT rather than Brunello di Montalcino DOCG, a choice that reflected his conviction that a wine carrying the Montalcino name should be pure Sangiovese and nothing else.
Gianfranco Soldera died in February 2019 at the age of 82. The estate remains in family hands, run today by his widow Graziella and their children Monica and Mauro, together with their partners, who have continued the vineyard and cellar practices he established.
i.WINE currently carries Case Basse Soldera 2018, the 2019 in both 750ml and 1500ml magnum formats, and the 2020, also available in magnum.
