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How Our Vines Avoid Disease and Fungus
Even with the decrease in temperature, as posted yestarday, our vines are, compared to the average, quite forward in their vegetation. We are organizing a liquid treatment against downy mildew and...
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Vineyard Update: Transplanting 50-Year-Old Vines
We've been busy at work in the old Paganelli Vineyard, where we grow grapes for our Brunello di Montalcino Riserva. A small number of vines had to be eradicated, but since we are so attached to this...
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Vineyard Update: Spollonatura and Good Signs in the Vineyards
Our workers are currently working in the vineyards for the “spollonatura”: it is an operation through which we remove from the vine the buds born along the trunk and we reduce the number of buds that...
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Vineyard Update: Fruit Set in the Vineyards
After a short break to renovate the look of our blog, we are back to writing updates from the vineyards. Over the past few days, we have had bad weather in Montalcino that brought rain and, in some...
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Vineyard Update: Green Clearing the Vines
We are finishing the green clearing of the vines, which consists of removing the new buds from the trunk because they are only damaging the vine. In the photo, part of the vines have already been...
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Vineyard Update: Seeing Green
In the beginning of this week the bad weather that has hit Italy with rainfalls has arrived to Montalcino too. Fortunately, here in S.Angelo we had just a little bit of rain. The vines, thanks to the...
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Olives Continue to Grow in Montalcino
In the past few days, a strong wind from the north, Tramontana, has been blowing (see video). It has brought low temperatures which, at night, are around 12°C. For the whole upcoming week, sunny...
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Vineyard Update: Assessing Grape Production
This time of the year, as always, we assess the grape production for each vineyard. To do this, we go into the vineyards and randomly choose some vines. We count the number of grape bunches, measure...
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Vineyard Update: Preserving Water in the Soil
The weather is still very hot due to the African anticyclone that brought high temperatures of 7-8°C (12-14°F) above average. The vines are currently reacting well to the high temps. We are still...
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Grape Color Beginning To Change
Today during our daily vineyard inspections to check the health of the vines, we found that the first Sangiovese grapes are starting to change their color: this is the beginning of veraison...
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Preparing for New Vineyards
We started work in the fields where we will soon plant new vineyards. The Franceschi family, owner of Il Poggione, plans to plant Vermentino, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio vineyards. To do so, we...
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Vineyard Update: Repairing Dead and Damaged Vines
This year we have substituted the vines that were dead or seriously damaged by the Esca, which is a fungal disease affecting the trunk of mature grapevines, with new vines prepared in vases a year ago....
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Vineyard Update: Grape Thinning in the Pianelli Vineyard
We started thinning the grapes in the central part of the estate in the Pianelli Vineyard, adjacent to the cellar. The vines do not have too many grape bunches but, considering the seasonal trend, we...
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Vineyard Update: Veraison in the Vineyards
In the vineyards veraison is happening, thanks to the heat, which has been persistently high even as night temperatures are dropping to 68°F (20°C). We started to manually irrigate the new vineyards...
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Vineyard Update: Vermentino Ripening
This is the vineyard where we grow our Vermentino. The vines are approximately 15 years old and they are spurred cordon trained. When we have very dry summers, we can irrigate the vineyards so that the...
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2015 Harvest Begins!
Today we started the 2015 harvest. We started picking the Sangiovese grapes we will use to produce our Rosé. The weather continues to be sunny, with high temperatures around 93°F (34°C) during the...
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Vineyard Update: Back to Work
Now that the harvest is over, we start some vineyard maintenance work. At this time, it is necessary to oxygenate the soil, which has been made compact by the tractors passing over it. At the same time...
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The Favino Bean: A Natural Fertilizer
Yesterday we started to sow the Favino. Favino is a leguminous plant that we use as a natural fertilizer. As its roots burrow into the soil and grow, they create sacks used to store the nitrogen coming...
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The 2015 Olive Harvest
On Friday we started harvesting olives to make our Extra Virgin Olive Oil. We have 12,000 olive trees on the Il Poggione estate. The olives are hand-picked and brought immediately to the estate’s oil...
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Vineyard Update: Organic Fertilization
We have finished the work in the fields where we will be planting new vineyards in 2016. We are fertilizing the soil using pelleted manure that is buried in the soil. Organic fertilization is very...
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