Tenuta di Artimino in Camignano DOCG
Tenuta di Artimino in Camignano Experience
The AntePrime Toscana program is the most exciting way for international journalists to taste the region’s wines and make notes on the new vintage. Yet it is also the best way to discover the “hidden gems” responsible for the wine industry as it exists today.
For example, the Carmignano DOCG is a new-to-me region that I have read about in wine books, yet had never visited.
The AntePrime Toscana program enabled me to visit the region in virtually the same way as the Medici family had back in 1596.
Well, not quite–but close.
In that year, Ferdinand I de’ Medici saw the rolling hills of Carmignano and the beautiful sunset and built his hunting lodge here. I’m suspecting that he may have also tasted the wine of the region while in the area.
The ”hunting lodge” he built, pictured below, became the family summer estate.
Tenuta di Artimino–Medieval Days to the Present
One of the first documents on the wine production of these hills dates to 804 A.D. It was the time of the reign of Charlemagne and his son, Pippin.
A parchment dating from this period, written in Latin, reads that the church of San Pietro a Seano granted some land in use with a system of dividing the harvest that can be considered an ancient form of sharecropping.
In the 1400s, merchant Francesco Datini placed fifteen large orders of Carmignano wine for his wine cellar, paying more than the going price for the most prestigious wines of the time.
The poet Domenico Bartoloni wrote a verse saying that while “while French wines such as the Claretto di Avignone may be good, and Chianti has nothing to complain about, the wine of Artimino and Carmignano are in a class by themselves.”
In 1935, Giuseppe Olmo–known by all as Gepin–went down in history by setting a new Hour Distance Record in international cycling.
In those days, international sports figures probably didn’t have the same “influencer” status as they do today, nor the millions of dollars in endorsement fees. And to make his dream of owning a world-class, wine-producing castle estate more difficult, he came from a family of modest means.
Yet “Gepin” knew the value of hard work, sacrifice and tenacity. And he must have also possessed more than a modicum of charm, for he could purchase Tenuta di Artimino in the 1980s.
Yet (nearly) a half-century ago, the castle was nothing as it is today. By various accounts, the roof had been bombed in the second world war and never repaired.
Slowly, he was able to rebuild it into the masterpiece it is today, now an UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Medici Villa La Ferdinanda.
Tenuta di Artimino–The New Generation
Annabella Pascale, CEO, is the granddaughter of Giuseppe Olmo and our guide on this tour. Through her eyes, we could see that this land has been a true cradle of arts, good living, and wine for centuries,
Before the formal tasting of the house’s excellent wines, she gave us a tour of the house and told more than a few stories. The history of the Carmignano Docg wine begins with the Etruscans, who already produced wine in these areas millennia ago. They had found wine vessels in the area inside some Etruscan tombs. And no doubt, some remain buried deep in the earth, perhaps near the Tenuta di Artimino vineyards itself.
Visit Tenuta di Artimino
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