The son of an Italian father and an American mother bought a piece of land in the upper Orcia Valley in the 1980s with the money he had once received from the sale of a painting by the American expressionist Cy Twombly. After years of apprenticeship in Bordeaux (at Château Ausone and Freund Thunevins Château Valandraud, among others), he began planting the first vines there in 1990 - but not the traditional Tuscan vine Sangiovese, but the classic Bordeaux varieties: in extremely densely packed (9,400 vines per hectare) with grape zone close to the ground, without artificial irrigation.
