There’s nothing like the feeling of grasping a plump bunch of grapes in your hand as you snip off its stem from the leafy vine. We spent Saturday morning carefully clipping away at the mouth watering bunches of Sangiovese grapes. Done the old-fashioned way (by hand) grape harvesting is a tricky job because the bunches grow on and around anything in their path, stray leaves and support wires included. Sometimes the bunches are so dense that it’s impossible to tell where they’re growing from, so you must meticulously clip away at leaf stems and tiny corkscrews of new vines in order to release the bunch into it’s proper home, the collection container.

Two hours and 28 containers later we had the whole vineyard picked thanks to the help of a few other eager volunteers including Franco, an Italian neighbor who had indeed squished grapes with his feet back in his younger years.

We transported the brimming containers via tractor up to the cantina, which is the winemaking basement, where we dumped the grape bunches into the destemming machine, a shiny table sized device with an open top and series of rotating coils below that separate the stems from the grapes. The mashed up grapes are expelled through a tube at the bottom and propelled into a tall, steel fermentation tank where they are on their way to becoming the 2007 vintage of Le Nonne’s Gideone Superiore Montecucco DOC wine.

A Lesson in Tuscan Wine Naming Conventions

Tuscan wine labels can be a bit of a puzzle to put together. They usually contain the name of the wine producer or vineyard, in this case Le Nonne, as well as a specific name for the wine, which is made up by the producer. The wine we helped make is called Gideone Superiore after the former owner of Le Nonne. If the wine comes from an area with an established DOC (Denominazione di origine controllata) and adheres to the standards for the wine, it will also include the name of the DOC name; in this case it’s Montecucco. A DOC indicates a defined area of production with specific requirements for the type and proportion of grapes used to make the wine. Chianti is perhaps the most famous DOC in Italy.

Unfortunately, you won’t find any Gideone Superiore on the shelves at your local wine store. Le Nonne only makes enough for family and friends and a restaurant or two in nearby towns. But if you find yourself passing through Monticello Amiata in Tuscany, you could look up Le Nonne and pick up a bottle right from the source!

To see pictures from our time at Le Nonne, click here.

Last Modified : September 12th, 2007
Filed under : Italy, Food and drink
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