You reach the entrance after walking along a side street which is perfectly accessible. It winds through a part of the countryside that still preserves its natural beauty, an area of the Chianti close to Radda where you can imagine the past, when an old peasant with a wrinkled sunburnt face stops our car with his cart drawn by a horse as old and weary as himself. He doesn’t take any notice of us and continues on his way and, after crossing a little bridge, he draws to one side to let us pass. He looks askance at us and takes off his straw hat to greet us with a deferential gesture which probably hides a note of provocation. It is a gesture of other times. The road begins to climb. On the sides, we can see flourishing rows of vines. When looking up, we understand that the Chianti of wine needs large spaces and we see abundant bunches of grapes pulling down the vines and realize that in a few days’ time, they frill be harvested by the villagers who will celebrate the birth of a new wine and the renewal of life. Then we reach a circle of ancient walls where we have to stop the car. We are in the circular urban beauty of a castle which has left the echoes of devastating sieges behind it and has started to survive on agriculture. There are still medieval buildings, houses with beautiful late Renaissance doorways. But the large castle-keep and the emblem of Sant’Eufrosino, with its magnificent stone facade revealing the elements of Florentine Renaissance architecture culminating in a slender tympanum which blends with the broken tympanum of the doorway, are the main actors of this impressive stone alley.
Giovanella Stianti Mascheroni, owner of the wine-producing firm and of many buildings in the borgo, introduces us to the secrets of her wines. “Volpaia” she tells us “is a firm I am proud of. It is a modern and highly active firm but succeeds in being unobtrusive. We did our best to hide the productive sector so as to concentrate on the beauty of this small medieval center. Indeed, the entire borgo is involved in the wine and olive oil production as the vat-rooms, cellars, ‘vinsantaia’, bottling machinery, store-rooms for oil jars and the presses, though very modern, are kept in the basements, in the buildings, deconsacrated churches and in the buildings of the borgo, united to one another by a surprising underground ‘wine duct’.” Our hostess invites us into the towering castle-keep to sample her wines. She offers us a lithe something to eat, to better appreciate the wine and then the cork is unscrewed forever from the Castello di Volpaia Riserva, a red wine with an intense fragrance consisting entirely of Sangiovese. The wine has to be swished round in the wine glass to express its qualities in such a brief time and does so soon after. We sip it, but first of all we inhale its fragrance and a still musty, but marked flavor of berries goes up our nostrils. Soon after we can taste a full-bodied, persistent flavor, enhanced by a tannic after-taste which vanishes immediately. It is an excellent wine but meanwhile, another bottle is presented for us to express our inadequate opinion. It is a label which Volpaia is understandably proud of: Balifico. In this case, our hostess does not allow us to taste it at once. “This is a subtle wine which requires a long period of airing to give the best of itself – she says handing us the bottle with the precious wine – you have to open it a few hours before a dinner of red meat or game. You will see that the combination is perfect”. We return by car and soon after we are back in the midst of the luxuriant vineyards of Volpaia in that part of the Chianti where the vegetation does not consist only of vineyards and olive groves.

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See also:

The Castle Of Gabbiano in Chianti, The Antinori Family Wine Producers, Mazzei of Fonterutoli Chianti Makers, Antinori: Wine Makers for 800 Years, Colle Bereto in Florence, The Small Vineyard of Colle Bereto, The Great Montevertine: a Small Winegrower, Albola by Zonin, Castello Brolio of Ricasoli Firidolfi, Colombaio di Cencio Tech Wine, Ricasoli of Cacchiano, San Felice Chianti Hamlet

or go back to Chianti Wine Producing Estates