Caprili
Every estate in Montalcino has a founding date. Caprili has a founding act: the day a family of sharecroppers became owners of the land they had worked for generations.
The Bartolommei arrived in Montalcino in 1911, farming as tenants — moving from podere to podere, livestock in tow — on the great Santa Restituta estate in the hills southwest of the town. In 1952 they came to the farm called Caprili, and in 1965, after half a century of patient labor, they gathered the means to buy it. That same year, they planted their first vineyard. They named it Madre — mother — and it bears fruit still, giving its grapes to the estate’s first Riserva.
The timing proved providential. Montalcino then counted only a handful of producers, and Caprili grew up alongside the appellation itself: among the early members of the Consorzio in 1972, with a first bottled vintage in 1978 and a first Riserva in 1983. The estate now spans 58 hectares on the slopes that descend toward the Orcia and Ombrone rivers, near Tavernelle — a fortunate corner of Montalcino where sandy, mineral-rich soils and steady sea breezes give Sangiovese elegance, perfume, and health in equal measure.
The family’s convictions have not changed since the first harvest. Working as a team, together they vinify only their own grapes, ferment with native yeasts, and raise the wines slowly in large casks, in the traditional manner — persuaded that Brunello needs nothing added to it, only time and attention. Today the fourth generation leads the work: Giacomo in the cellar, alongside his father Manuele in the vineyards, in an estate that remains a family in the fullest sense of the word.
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