Producer Profile: Donatella Cinelli Colombini
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Donatella Cinelli Colombini is all about 'new beginnings'....
Producer profile: Donatella Cinelli Colombini
If her brother Stefano at Fattoria dei Barbi represents tradition and continuity, Donatella Cinelli Colombini is all about new beginnings; her wine label with the dove (colomba in Italian) in flight is pregnant with meaning.
She inherited the Casato estate from her mother Francesca, the grande dame of Montalcino wine, in 1998.
Since then Cinelli Colombini, who is a softly spoken but extremely determined lady, has embarked on an endless succession of innovative projects.
One of her first missions was to create a winery exclusively staffed by women – referred to in the Casato Prime Donne estate name.
She has given free rein to her passion for art (she is an art history graduate) in commissions for paintings, sculpture and various installations scattered around the cellars and the estate.
Cinelli Colombini is completely replanting her vineyards on the hills north of the village.
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She ferments with strains of indigenous yeasts, selected on the estate.
Her latest innovation is to move over to conical cement fermenting vats – cutting-edge stuff.
As for the wines themselves, with the arrival of French oenologist Valérie Lavigne, they have taken a new direction, characterised by precision, elegance and succulent fruit.
Richard Baudains is the regional chair for Veneto in the Decanter World Wine Awards.
Richard Baudains was born and bred in Jersey in the Channel Islands and trained to be a teacher of English as a foreign language. After several years in various foreign climes, Baudains settled down in beautiful Friuli-Venezia Giulia, having had the good fortune to reside previously in the winemaking regions of Piemonte, Tuscany, Liguria and Trentino-Alto Adige. Baudains wrote his first article for Decanter in 1989 and has been a regular contributor on Italian wines ever since. His day job as director of a language school conveniently leaves time for a range of wine-related activities including writing for the Slow wine guide, leading tastings and lecturing in wine journalism at L’Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche and for the web-based Wine Scholars’ Guild.