Tinata: Rhône grapes meet Tuscan elegance

last updated 14 March 2025

The story of Tinata – a Rhône-style blend from Monteverro, the Tuscan winery owned by Julia and Georg Weber – began long before the wine was ever bottled.

Monteverro’s slice of terroir in Capalbio, in the Maremma area of the Tuscan coast overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, spans 60ha, with 38ha under vine. Year-round onshore breezes temper the warm summer nights, creating the perfect, serene Mediterranean climate for Syrah and Grenache.

These were the favourite varieties of Georg’s mother, Cristine, who loved Rhône wines – so having planted them on one of the estate’s hillside blocks, near a centuries-old grove of cork oaks, Julia and Georg named the new wine ‘Tinata’ in her honour.

Today, those vines have taken well to their Tuscan home, developing the characteristic aromas of the Maremma’s local plant species. Georg explains that behind the winery there are ‘hundreds of square kilometres of macchia’, the untamed undergrowth found around the Mediterranean, home to ‘an innumerable variety of wild herbs and bushes.’

Georg describes Tinata, launched in 2008, as ‘characterised by its elegance but also spiciness, as these herbs, together with the saltiness that comes from the constant sea breeze, give the wine typical notes for our plot.’

‘There is no other blend of Syrah and Grenache in Tuscany,’ adds Georg, ‘It is a very elegant and smooth wine that nevertheless shows great complexity and spiciness – it seduces with its contrasts, is an elegant wine dedicated to a wonderful woman, my mother, and it ages very well.’

A vertical tasting of Tinata from 2008 to 2021 confirms that the wines age gracefully. More robust and fruit-forward in youth, after five to seven years these wines can elevate all kinds of Mediterranean-inspired dishes, especially lamb or porcini mushrooms.

Marrying Rhône varieties and Tuscan soils

Monteverro’s winemaker, Matthieu Taunay, is busy all year managing the vineyard and cellar, with one goal: to allow the vines to express themselves varietally while also embodying their terroir.

‘The journey to reach this goal is long and tortuous,’ he recalls, drawing on the memory of sixteen harvests. ‘We did an analysis of the biological activity of the soils, which informed our approach to growing cover crops and compost distribution,’ he explains, ‘We prune to respect the heterogeneity of terroir and to ensure the longevity of the plants, always trying to avoid necrosis [death of tissue], which could disrupt sap flow.’ The Syrah is Guyot-trained, while the Grenache is Cordon-trained to control its vigour.

The team was mindful of the risk of dépérissement (Syrah decline), Taunay explains: ‘We took this risk very seriously and decided to work with the natural genetic diversity of a massal selection to limit the danger,’ as well as grafting methods that ensure ‘the best union between the rootstock and the variety.’

From two hectares of Syrah and one of Grenache, Taunay vinifies between six and 10 different lots depending on vintage variation, all in stainless steel tanks with natural yeasts. After 12-24 days of maceration, the Syrah begins malolactic fermentation in barrel, with the Grenache following about a month later. Ageing takes place in a mix of new and used oak, as well as concrete. The final months of ageing take place in stainless steel tanks, putting the wine into a slight reductive phase before bottling after a total of 15-18 months.

Georg sums up the winemaking team’s philosophy: ‘Jean Hoefliger, our consultant winemaker, helps fine-tune this ageing, encouraging us to “listen to the wine and accompany it, instead of guiding it into a chosen direction without respecting its own character.”’