By the year 1400, the Italian city of Florence had established itself as the political heart of Tuscany under the rule of the Medici family. But two centuries earlier things were not so clear. The 13th century was rife with factionalism and brutal violence in the region, and no one city or ruling family had the upper hand. Among the contenders undermining Florentine superiority were the Pazzi di Valdarno, a proud noble line from the rival city of Arezzo who made their home in the valley of the Arno river in southeast Tuscany. The attacks the Pazzi waged on Florence were so unrelenting and effective they forced the Florentines into walling the small towns of San Giovanni Valdarno and Castelfranco di Sopra to defend their positions there, and resulted in the family’s expulsion on pain of death from Florentine-controlled land. The Pazzi are not well remembered by history—the losing side rarely is—and their last name, which translates as The Crazies from the Valley of the Arno, probably didn’t help their posthumous reputation. The poet Dante imagines meeting a member of the family in the bottom of Hell in The Divine Comedy, punished for treachery, and other contemporary medieval political chronicles refer to them as “incorrigible brigands.” But more recent historians have characterized them with less prejudice: fierce, unapologetic defenders of their territory in the face of a foe insisting on hegemony. One of the last great military men of the line, Guglielmo dei Pazzi di Valdarno, fell on the battlefield at the hands of his Florentine nemeses in 1289, preferring death to surrender. IL BORRO - Photography by Clay McLachlan MORITZ AND DANIELLE AT PODERE IL CARNASCIALE - Photography by Clay McLachlan THE FARMER’S MARKET HALL IN MONTEVARCHI WITH LOCAL PRODUCTS - Photography by Clay McLachlan Fates and Fortunes I start thinking about the Pazzi di Valdarno while I’m sitting with Moritz Rogosky at his sliver of paradise known as Podere il Carnasciale atop a hill on the left bank of the Arno in the Valdarno di Sopra DOC, a denomination with as much history and quality as any within Tuscany, but that, like the Pazzi of the very same Valdarno, has been obscured by the crescendoing fame of another name in the intervening centuries. Despite a place of honor in the 1716 Medici decree that indicated the wines of Valdarno alongside Chianti and others as being of the highest quality, it is not up for argument which of those Tuscan wines has retained its fortune. I’m also thinking of the Pazzi because both the wines of Valdarno and the people who produce them are delightfully crazy and intensely territorial—two qualities that proved hard to parlay into victory for the original Pazzi but might yet prove useful this time around. The unfathomable diversity of wines here—spanning from friendly expressions of classic Tuscan grapes to wild experiments with never-before-seen varietals to ultra-sophisticated luxury bottlings—would not seem to lend itself to the task of presenting a unified vision as a coherent group. Chianti owes at least part of its ongoing success to its simple, consistent presentation as a red wine made from Sangiovese. But if there’s one thing that stands to put Valdarno di Sopra back on the map of admired wine regions, it’s the uncanny ability of the winemakers from this DOC to work together, even with their very different ideas and practices, and the surprising clarity with which their wines express their shared terroir. From where I’m sitting and tasting Moritz’s Caberlot, a singular and still unidentified grape he uses to make a few thousand mostly large format bottles each year, I can see the the neighboring vineyards of Petrolo, where Luca Sanjust and his son Rocco have created a pantheon of marvelously unexpected wines, using unloved varietals like Trebbiano or once disdained vessels like cement. The Petrolo property is home to the Tower of Galatrona, another medieval landmark that was long abandoned but has now been restored to its former splendor and permits a bird’s eye view of this unique terrain cut through by the Arno river. ROCCO SANJUST AND THE GALATRONA TOWER AT PETROLO - Photography by Clay McLachlan Bottled Lightning The summer before, as I was standing at the top with Luca, he reminded me that although most of the land immediately beneath the tower is now forest, when it was first constructed in the 10th century and for hundreds of years after, the land around the tower was all thoroughly cultivated, much of it planted to vine. The depth of that presence is felt not just in Luca’s wines but in all the wines that come from this place. There is something primordial about them; they reverberate with an energy that makes you think of deep time and dinosaurs but also have a kind of earnest self-presentation that strikes intimacy with the palate. However they managed to bottle that lightning, it’s a pleasure to drink, and the Valdarno di Sopra DOC is a monument to the power of harnessing the spirit of a diverse group of people and channeling it into an unlikely harmony. Rolling down the hill to cross over onto the opposite bank of the Arno one afternoon, I stop in Bucine to grab a few things at the supermarket. The store is maybe 800 square feet, jammed with essentials and the shrinking elderly population of this fraction of a town, but the wine and spirits section nonetheless offers boutique local spirits and some hard to find, serious wines from the area. Expectations of quality are high here, and the outsize delivery of excellence has been and will no doubt remain a determining factor in the appreciation of this place. It’s why Ettore Ciancico of the tiny La Salceta estate worked so hard with the consortium of Valdarno wines to delineate a series of forward-looking, strict but still inclusive parameters in the recently approved new guidelines for production in the DOC, which is now the first in Italy and second in Europe to be entirely organic. While Bengio the dog circles patiently, desperate to use the 15 kilos he has on me to force me to pay attention to him but too gentle to dare, Ettore explains to me how the philosophy that guided the drafting of the new disciplinare also guides his individual work. Sometimes he makes just a few hundred bottles of wine in a vintage if that’s all that he can make while staying true to himself and his land, but that minuscule production gives him time to play and find out what might come next. Innovation and tradition are sometimes placed in opposition, but Ettore is right: continuity comes from using history and experience to keep finding new ways to express the same identity so that you can persistently become more legible to more people. It’s the way to grow a community. AMEDEO MORETTI AND AMEDEO’S AUNT AT SETTE PONTI - Photography by Clay McLachlan IL BORRO - Photography by Clay McLachlan Common Ground Later that evening, driving down the unmarked private road between Il Borro and Tenuta Sette Ponti where I have frequently come dangerously close to crashing my car, I reflect on that continuity. If the Valdarno in general boasts a shared spirit, the adjacent properties of Ferruccio and Salvatore Ferragamo and Alberto and Amedeo Moretti Cuseri, respectively, are even more tightly aligned. When they talk to me about their wines I can feel them simmering with an electricity contained only by the expert deployment of sheer will and sartorial excellence, and when I drink their wines I always feel like the liquid is ready to burst out of the bottle, but has been polished enough to know better. The way they navigate the weight of history against the need to experiment has similarly resolved into a propitious tension, rather than a struggle, in their recent projects. For Alberto and Amedeo this has meant small but significant changes in their wines and their practices, most excitingly the introduction of Cabernet Franc into the blend for their Oreno, which delivers the kind of fine-tuned, sleek luxury cloaked in a warmth and naked affection that the brothers themselves emanate. At Il Borro this instead prompted the introduction of a unique Cabernet Sauvignon, Nitrito, which I discuss with Salvatore over a gin and tonic crafted with the new Gin Dal Borro from the property, as though to hammer home the point about testing new ideas without quite planning it. I am not particularly inclined toward Cabernet Sauvignon, just as I am skeptical of tall, handsome men, because I think they’ve had it easy in this life. But as with Sette Ponti’s Bordeaux-blended Oreno, I like that making a Cabernet Sauvignon in a historic wine-growing region of Tuscany forces people to contend with the definition of authenticity— international varietals have, after all, been grown here for centuries so are just as deeply rooted as Sangiovese—and I especially like that the grapes for this wine come from a vineyard worked by draft horses, cleverly closing the cycle on sustainable production at the working farm. And most of all I like how even with all of its sophistication, a sip of Nitrito has that primitive vitality and that candor that I find across the Valdarno, as though it suffers from an inability to be anything but itself. History, as we know, is written by the victors, and humans like a neatly told tale. This often means we not only accept, but also celebrate the way things turned out as the inevitable telos of a superior execution, even if things could have just as easily gone another way. By 1716, even if the Grand Duchy had been firmly in place for half a century and Cosimo III de’ Medici could sling decrees at a populace thoroughly subject to his rule, the wines he celebrated weren’t yet guaranteed on their paths toward greatness. Back on top of Carnasciale on a hot day 300 years later with a glass in hand, Moritz makes the observation that sets me thinking of the Pazzi: “This project is kind of crazy. This wine wasn’t part of the plan.” It’s true—but sometimes the plan changes, and you have to be a little crazy to come out on top. This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine. Click here to subscribe today! Our Italian Wine Coverage A village-by-village guide to Chianto Classico—plus, the best Chianti wines to drink right now. What are Super Tuscans? Here are our current favorites. Here's how Italian winemakers are rethinking Barolo's identity. The Wine Enthusiast Podcast explores why wine lovers (and everyone else) are obsessed with Italy. From the Shop Find Your Wine a Home Our selection of red wine glasses is the best way to enjoy the wine’s subtle aromas and bright flavors. Shop All Wine Glasses