Fabrizio Dionisio

www.fabriziodionisio.it

Sergio Dionisio (Fabrizio’s father) acquired Il Castagno in the early 1970s, a modest property of some seven hectares, located in the hills facing the town of Cortona. His ambition had always been to develop a farming operation that embraced the local land’s ability to produce exceptional quality grapes.

After the purchase of a second parcel of land in 1992 about five kilometres away the vineyard reached its current size of 15 hectares.  The vines are planted on gently rolling slopes and are surrounded by a classically Tuscan landscape of woods, olive trees, grain fields, sunflowers, and tobacco plants on one hand, and on the other medieval hamlets, country villas, churches, and Etruscan remains. 

It was Fabrizio who decided to “grub up” the existing Sangiovese and Trebbiano vines and replant nearly the entire estate with Syrah. In Cortona this grape variety, far from being simply imported from elsewhere, is considered authentically local, perhaps a viticultural heritage of the French occupation of the area during the Napoleonic era two hundred years ago.

Certainly Syrah has acclimated itself masterfully to the distinctive weather and soil conditions of the Cortona terroir, and gives phenomenal results when cultivated with the particular attention it requires. Indeed, Syrah from Cortona is unanimously considered the best of Italy, and this small area in the south-east of Tuscany is nicknamed the Italian “Cotes du Rhone”.

The objective of Fabrizio Dionisio —set right from the start and in close agreement with oenologists Federico Curtaz and Attilio Pagli—is to produce wines that are absolutely artisanal, and to create wines full of character and soul. The purpose was in fact to make a great Syrah which could compete with the best ones in the world, but always being clearly Tuscan, and that was able to express its terroir of origin, counting on the character, minerality and elegance that only the ancient and really suited soils of Cortona can give to this wine.