Why it matters
The producer
Sinalunga sits on the southern lip of Siena province, where the landscape tips toward Arezzo and the cooperative model is not a romantic survival but a working agricultural society. Cantina Viticoltori Senesi Aretini was founded there in 1971, and today it draws together 235 growers farming a collective 350 hectares across the Siena-Arezzo borderland.
The scale matters because it shapes the wine. This is not a single domaine with one sensibility expressed across a handful of parcels. It is a cooperative whose output depends on how 235 individuals farm their land, and where the winemaker's job is to find consistent quality across that breadth. Mery Ferrara holds that job, and her answer to the cooperative challenge has been to work the cellar lightly: minimal intervention, allowing the character of Sangiovese grown across this wide address to come forward rather than being smoothed into uniformity by heavy oak treatment.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Sinalunga is a hill town in the Val di Chiana, the broad flat-bottomed valley running south toward Montepulciano and Cortona. The commune straddles the administrative boundary between Siena and Arezzo provinces, which is why the cooperative carries both names. The vineyards sit across this borderland, drawing on soils and exposures from two provinces rather than one tightly defined hill.
The appellation is Chianti DOCG, the broader designation rather than Chianti Classico, which is confined to the zone between Florence and Siena. Chianti DOCG covers a wider arc of central Tuscany, and wines from this zone carry the Chianti label without the Classico qualifier. The grape is Sangiovese.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
With 350 hectares spread across 235 growers, the cooperative does not farm as a single unit. Each grower manages their own parcels, and the cellar works with fruit delivered from across the territory. Six growers hold certified organic status; the remainder farm under conventional or sustainable practices, but no collective certification applies to the whole cooperative.
In the cellar, minimal intervention translates into a light touch with oak and an emphasis on preserving the fresh, mineral character of Sangiovese from this territory. Across the core range, the wines sit closer to red fruit and dried herb than to the dense, woody profile that defined much Chianti in an earlier era. The Chianti Riserva has fixed acidity, but the house style pulls toward acidity and freshness rather than extraction.
Wines to know
The range in view
Two confirmed wines anchor the range.
The Chianti Castelsina is the entry-level bottle, made from 100% Sangiovese under the Chianti DOCG. The 2024 vintage runs at 12.5% alcohol with residual sugar under 0.3 grams per 100 millilitres, placing it firmly in dry territory. The profile is spicy and oak-influenced: dark cherry, forest raspberry, and sage in the fruit register, with cocoa, cinnamon, pine nuts, and bergamot adding depth and dried-herb complexity. It is a wine built for the table at an accessible price point.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Chianti Castelsina. It is 100% Sangiovese from the cooperative's broad Siena-Arezzo territory, dry and lightly oaked at 12.5% alcohol, and it gives a clear picture of what Mery Ferrara is doing in the cellar: fresh acidity, dark cherry and sage, oak spice that adds complexity without dominating. It is not a grand wine, but it is an honest one, and at its price point it shows what cooperative-scale Sangiovese can do when the cellar works with the grape rather than over it.