How Banfi made an entire wine region famous
By the late 1960s, Montalcino, a hilltop town in southern Tuscany, was one of the region's most deprived areas, despite the fame of its Brunello wine. Even its keenest vintners were struggling to capitalise on the wine’s potential.
The wine itself dated back to the late 19th-century, when the Ferruccio Biondi-Santi of the Biondi-Santi estate took a local clone of the Sangiovese grape – known locally as Sangiovese Grosso – and in 1888 created the Brunello di Montalcino. It was the first single-varietal wine made in Tuscany.
While these wines soon achieved legendary status, their audience consisted of a niche of connoisseurs for decades. It was only towards the turn of the last century that Brunello became a commercial success, an achievement undersigned by an Italian-American family, a Piedmontese oenologist, and a jaw-dropping investment.
A wine phoenix
The Marianis, an Italian-American family, had been involved in the wine business for several decades. With great success, they made fortunes by importing Lambrusco from one of Italy’s largest co-ops, Cantine Riunite. “Then, in the 70s, my father had a dream,” says Banfi CEO, Cristina Mariani-May speaking of her father, and today Banfi’s chairman emeritus, John F. Mariani Jr. “He wanted to become a wine producer.”
To fulfill his winemaking fantasy, John Mariani partnered with Piedmontese oenologist Ezio Rivella, who had already consulted for his firm for some time.
Rivella eyed Montalcino as the project’s target. The area appeared as the ideal vessel to decant the Mariani’s plentiful American dollars into. Its Brunello was well-known and highly respected amongst the experts, and in 1966, it was one of the first handful of Italian wines to be granted DOC status.
Despite its fame however, “Brunello di Montalcino was a 'phoenix',” says Rivella. “Sure, it was already a legendary wine, but did not have a real presence on the market.”
He remembers Franco Biondi-Santi “telling me that he would make 13,000 bottles a year but only manage to sell half of them.” In the late 70s, Montalcino produced a mere 3% of today’s average output of Brunello, and Rivella recalls that most wineries would sell their wine in bulk, meaning they would sell it as anonymous juice. “It was unaged so they couldn’t even call it Brunello. When I said I wanted to produce 100,000 bottles a year, people told me I had gone mad.”
While Montalcino’s small, artisanal wineries had no financial means nor the necessary marketing skills to grow, Rivella believed that Banfi’s dollars could turn Brunello from a rare treasure into a commercial success. Furthermore, the town abounded with properties for sale and the limited land price – the equivalent of about $770 per acre – meant that Banfi’s money could buy plenty of land.
A sizeable investment
In 1977, determined to seize such a unique opportunity, Rivella pitched his Montalcino project to John Mariani.
“‘How much can you invest?’ I asked John,” Rivella recalls. “‘Perhaps we could do $100,000,000 spread over five years?’ he answered. Honestly, I thought our conversation was being purely academic.”
Yet, a week later, Rivella received a call from the bank. Telling him that he was about to receive the equivalent of $2 million, the first installment of Mariani’s investment.
“I dropped all other commitments and decided to dedicate my life to Banfi and Montalcino,” says Rivella.
In a few years, John Mariani’s dollars and Rivella’s meticulous scouting work gave Banfi nearly 7,400 acres of land – the equivalent of 3,000 football fields. The property, which Banfi claims to be Europe’s largest contiguous agricultural estate, is dominated by the grandeur and charm of Poggio alle Mura castle. Rivella built his dream avant-garde winery near the castle, and inaugurated it in September 1984.
Mariani explains that the innovations that Banfi and Rivella had brought to Montalcino turned their Brunello into a wine whose taste profile perfectly suited the modern drinker. “We began at a time when everything in Italy started evolving from tradition. Angelo Gaja in Piedmont, Antinori in Chianti, and us in Montalcino,” she goes on. “Before, Brunello spent so much time in wood, it was harsh. Winemakers would say ‘this is how we do it here, this is how my grandfather worked’... but vats were dirty, vines out of control. We, as ‘outsiders’, were able to think of wine drinkers first.”
The first releases arrived in the 1980s, but it took time for the wine to attract attention. Then came the famed 1995 and 1997 vintages, and high scores from Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and Italy’s Gambero Rosso. Soon, herds of visiting journalists were on their way. Amazed by Poggio alle Mura’s imposing, medieval beauty, they supplied Rivella’s project with plenty of media coverage.
Banfi had propelled Montalcino into oenospace, turning Brunello into one of the world’s most sought-after wines. Today, more than 40 years after the birth of its Montalcino project, Banfi’s Brunello still stands out by combining Italy’s winemaking heritage with the quintessential embodiment of the American dream, while offering aspiring wine enthusiasts an affordable and widely available gateway to the world of fine wine.
A version of this article was first published in The Drop / Pix Wine in July 2021