Tenuta Guardastelle

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About Winery and Wines

In the lands around San Gimignano we grow vines and olive trees in line with the great passion that our family has handed down to us. We are happy to show you our little creation: Tenuta Guardastelle, one of the smallest wineries around San Gimignano.

It gives us great pleasure to be able to guide you on a vineyard tour and offer the fruits of our commitment and hard work. The winery, on the premises, is actually open everyday (except on Sunday) for wine tasting and vineyards visit.

The estate consists of approximately five hectares of vineyards and approximately 400 olive trees covering a further three hectares. The property is located at an average altitude of 290 metres above sea level and the vines are all on the south-east side of the property. This is one of the best possible exposures for the vineyards, offering them the chance to fully enjoy the sunlight, which favours photosynthesis and allows the grapes to ripen properly and the sugars in them to develop. The soils are cool and mostly composed of tufa, which is characteristic of this area. The dramatic climatic changes we have had to cope with in recent years make working the soils more complicated, but their composition means that, even in periods of severe drought, as happened in 2003 and more recently in 2017, 2018 and 2022, our vines do not suffer due to a lack of water and the grapes still ripen to perfection.

Meticulous selection of the bunches of grapes and harvesting by hand help to produce a natural, rather high sugar content in the berries, so that the standards required for the most important certification of Italian wines – the D.O.C.G. – are easily met.

And the wines produced by Tenuta Guardastelle all bear this important certification. Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (Controlled and Guaranteed Designation of Origin), this is the meaning of the acronym borne by as many as 78 wines throughout Italy, 11 of which are in Tuscany and include the world-famous Brunello di Montalcino and Chianti. The only white wine among the 11 Tuscan D.O.C.G.s is Vernaccia di San Gimignano (link alla pagina del vino). It was the first Italian wine to obtain D.O.C. status in 1966 before being “promoted” to D.O.C.G.

The estate also produces Chianti wines, specifically from the “Chianti Colli Senesi” subzone, a specific area within the Chianti production zone, situated entirely in the province of Siena. The grape variety that symbolises Tuscany is undoubtedly Sangiovese, which forms the basis for Chianti, in which we find a minimum of 75% of the variety, as required by production regulations. The red grapes grown on the estate are Sangiovese and small percentages of Syrah and Colorino. These three grapes are blended to produce our Tribolotto and Irpide.