“My mother, Erika Ratti, and father are from the area of Milano and Como in northern Italy,” explained Ambrogio Cremona Ratti in a recent virtual tasting with two wines (sent as samples) from Tenuta Sette Cieli. “My mother loved horses and wanted to move to the countryside. In the early 1990s, she started looking for property on the coast of Tuscany. In 1994, she finally found and purchased what set the chain. It’s a very special place – very isolated and remote. It was abandoned for years and had a house dating from the 1200s on the property.” So began the story of Tenuta Sette Cieli located in Bolgheri, well known for highly lauded wines such as those from Sassicaia. Originally purchased just to breed horses, Erika Ratti developed Tenuta Sette Cieli in 1998 with a ”deliberate intent to make high quality wines.”
Photo Credit: Tenuta Sette Cieli
In 2001, the first four hectares of vineyards were planted on terraces at 400 meters (1312 feet) above sea level, an altitude that affords consistent ventilation and marked diurnal temperature shifts. The elevation helps retain acidity and aromatic complexity in the grapes. The intense sunlight reflecting from the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea is beneficial to ripening. Different soil compositions relate to the altitude of the vineyards: at the hilltops, rock is the dominant element whereas at the foothills, soil is mainly clay, orange/red sands and loam, all alluvional and colluvional in origin.
More vineyards were planted and today, Tenuta Sette Cieli owns 120
This Article was originally published on Grape Experiences
