Ampeleia, 'Rosato de Ampeleia' Costa Toscana 2022

80% Carignan, 20% Alicante Nero (Grenache) 

Tuscany, Italy

Direct-pressed carignan with whole clusters of Grenache, macerate for 12 days. All concrete for 6 months. Fruity and salty, with just enough tannin. Certified biodynamic. 

Ampeleia was born in 2002 from the collaboration of Elisabetta Foradori, Giovanni Podini and Thomas Widmann. They saw the huge potential of this particular area of the Maremma, the Colline Metallifere, mineral-rich hills that have been mined since Etruscan times. This part of the Maremma has never been home to intensive agriculture, and it has some of the lowest population density in all of Italy. The Colline Metallifere is a national park and UNESCO Global Geopark site. 

Marco Tait is originally from Trentino, where his father was the agronomist at Foradori.  As a kid, he remembers doing after-school vineyard tasks and playing hide-and-seek in the cellar.  After enology school and working for some larger, more conventional wine operations in the North, he came to Ampeleia as head winemaker.

Ampeleia's vineyards are diverse and spread out -- 120 hectares of land, but only 35 planted to vines.  The rest is woods, olives, the vegetable garden, and pasture for  animals. There is a wide variety of altitudes, exposures, soil types (both mother rock and soil consistency).