San Donatino

The well-known French singer/poet Léo Férre and his wife Maria Cristina Diaz purchased this estate in 1971, where they settled with their entire family. Maria Cristina and her children still live there today. From the beginning, the Ferrés set about restoring and making the vineyards and approximately 5,000 olive trees productive. The initial harvests were sold in bulk until the early 1990s, when they decided to bottle and begin marketing their own wine.

This method continued until Giulio Gambelli’s final days and is nowadays maintained by Federico Staderini since he took over. The winery takes a traditional approach where the sign of the terroir and differences in vintages prevail absolutely over any form of wine standardization. Fermentation takes place spontaneously without using inoculated yeasts, macerations are prolonged, and the wines remain “sur lie” for several months. The base wines are aged only in steel, while the crus age in wood.