Our history

We were simply looking for an olive grove, we wanted to produce olive oil for us and for our friends according to our ideas, selecting the olive trees, harvesting the fruits of each cultivar at the beginning of veraison, crushing them immediately after harvesting and packaging the olive oil after a light filtration.

This research led us to Suvereto, the last town in the province of Livorno before the Grosseto Maremma, and there we met a great master of Tuscan cuisine, Giancarlo Bini in his Ombrone restaurant or rather in his "Enoliteca" where he had first selected a great quantity of mono-cultivar olive oils that he offered to customers with his own oil list, when oil was still considered a simple and vile ingredient for cooking. It became clear from that meeting that our idea made sense and that those abandoned lands on the ridge above Suvereto in the locality of Belvedere could represent the most beautiful challenge to realize our project.

This is where our story is born.

On that ridge, looking at the sea in the distance with Elba and Montecristo Islands in front of your eyes, with the scents of the scrub in the air and without any sign of anthropic contamination, we were certain that that place, abandoned by everyone, due to the difficulties of survival, it would have been the place of choice for producing an excellent olive oil.

From the highest part of the ridge, between the sea to the south and the metalliferous hills to the north, going down the two sides, we have recovered the uncultivated land from the 1950s when mechanization agriculture privileged areas easier to work on the impervious hills of Suvereto and the locals abandoned them.

We freed the olive trees, planted over the centuries by Belvedere people with so much effort, from the Mediterranean scrub, which with vigor and arrogance, had imprisoned them as well as it had taken over all the areas used for the necessary cultures for their survival.

 

The idea, the project, the evolution and the people.

Recover an abandoned territory, for reasons of non-competition according to the rules of maximum productivity at the lowest cost, through natural cultivation methods with their slowness and completeness, fertilizing the lands with green manures and microorganisms, respecting the lunar and vegetative phases and then waiting patiently and pay attention to seasonal results to evaluate and test increasingly specific methods and processes to achieve excellence.

 

Then the wine.

In the past, the cultivation of vines in Belvedere was relegated to a few rows on the perimeter of the fields planted with wheat, enough for the family's needs. The culture of wine in Belvedere had not developed due to the difficulty in building systems on these steep hills that prevented the mechanization of processing, and because of the necessary effort and the relative costs of labor, if it could be found. The inhabitants of Belvedere had gone from about 1000 at the end of the 19th century to about ten in 2000 and therefore there were no specific interests in enhancing this territory.

But the biodiversity present in this part of the territory, the minerality of the soil, the intensity of the light, the coolness of summer nights made us imagine the possibility of developing a sui generis product, a wine that could express belonging to this territory. , with its aromas, minerality, body and elegance and for this reason we planted the first Sangiovese vineyard in 2003, Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc the following year.

The results obtained, in terms of quality and characteristics of the first wines, bottled in 2010, encouraged us to continue and expand the vineyards by occupying all the land that it was possible to recover from the forest, the wild boars and the tenacity of the surrounding scrub. The preparation of the land to host the vineyards was laborious and complex due to the stonyness of the place, but the answer in the end was increasingly satisfying and generous. From 2011 to 2018 we planted another 5 hectares of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc , Vermentino and Aleatico from Elba depending on the affinity of the various cultivars to the soil that hosts them. We have fenced all the vineyards to defend them from the impetuousness of the wild boars, we have built a new underground cellar positioned above the vines where the wine rests and ages in large barrels and terracotta amphorae waiting for bottling, respecting cycles and phases of transformation without apply forced processes.

 

A project is born from an idea and is perfected with people.

The history of i Mandorli is not born from a family with agricultural origins handed down over time, but from a family with constant attention to respect for the land and its cultivation methods. It comes from a sensitivity towards a type of agriculture in general that has the task of protecting and safeguarding the territory, but it also comes from people who are still amazed by the vitality and strength that nature offers. Our wine represents an expression of the earth, of that specific territory with certain characteristics, becoming a link between the earth and man. Every person who has contributed to the growth of I Mandorli, from Gigi, Andrea and then Maddalena (my daughter), Costanza, Adil and myself as well, have not been and will never be simple operators, but artists who continuously shape their work in this agricultural forge. with respect for nature and the joy of seeing their art work realized.

 

Massimo Pasquetti