Barbicaia

Marco Barbi has always lived on this farm: He was born here, literally, because on 19 December 1968 there was such a snowfall that it prevented his mother from being taken to the hospital.

The history of the winery starts from a family tradition. Under the management of Marco’s father, as was the custom in the sixties, wine was made for the house, selling the remaining part of the grapes, produced in the 2 and a half hectares of the property.

Since Marco was a child, he had participated in the life of the fields, helping out in the vineyard, between tractors and harvests.

Later, he decided to leave and do something else: he studied design and started designing furniture for a local industry. But the bond with his land was visceral and at the end of the 90s Marco felt the strong call. The vineyard needed to be replanted and he returned to it, starting a profound modernization of production.

For several years, until 2011, he sold the grapes because he had a wine in mind that reflected his ideal of quality and it took time to reach it. Marco waited 10 years to make wine in his own name: since then they have been following each phase, also thanks to a very good winemaker and agronomist, Mery Ferrara, with whom they quickly understood each other.

Marco is convinced that wine reflects who makes it. Their soils express subtle, elegant and very fragrant wines; to this they add the use of small barrels, produced in Burgundy, without roasting and closed with steam. In this way they guarantee elegance, maximizing the varietal characteristics of the Sangiovese.

The name of the winery? Marco’s surname, Barbi, could not be used. One day he bought a dictionary of the dialect of Montepulciano and Val d’Orcia – his family is originally from Pienza – and discovered that the term “barbicaia” indicates the group of vine roots that emerge from the ground. And it seemed to him that everything all came together, meaning and philosophy.