Terre a Mano

Terre a Mano is beautifully situated on a hill overlooking the village of Bacchereto, in the province of Prato (north-west of Florence). Bacchereto is part of the Carmignano wine appellation, where wine has been produced since the Middle Ages.

Fattoria di Bacchereto / Terre a Mano is run by Rossella Bencini Tesi. After the death of her father and brother in the 1990s, she inherited the entire estate and was completely on her own.

Without any experience in viticulture, she left the work to experts who ran the business in the conventional way.

On an almost instinctive level, Rossella knew something wasn’t right about the way things were going and how her wine tasted. In 2000 she came into contact with a biodynamic oenologist and met an organic agronomist by chance. She took the plunge and noticed after only a year that her land was changing. Where the soil in the vineyards used to seem like a hard and impenetrable crust, and erosion and poor drainage caused all kinds of problems, the earth now began to breathe. Rossella’s vines became greener and livelier.

Rossella, meanwhile, is a talented and determined winemaker and has taken Carmignano to the next level.

The Rossella estate consists of 90 hectares of forest, of which 60 hectares are olive groves and 8 hectares are vineyards. The wines are produced with minimal intervention, so no use of chemicals or pesticides. Wine production can yield 20,000 bottles of wine in a good year. The grapes grown are sangiovese, canaiolo, cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc for the red wines. For the white wine with skincontact (Sassocarlo) and their Vin Santo, trebbiano and malvasia are grown.

The wines of Terre a Mano are rustic and elegant at the same time. The cooler location compared to the Chianti area (south of Florence) ensures wines that are driven by freshness and delicate tannins. Terre a Mano’s Carmigano is perhaps more like an elegant Bordeaux from St. Estephe than a classic Chianti.