Why it matters
The producer
Luigi Cecchi came to winemaking through his palate. He had worked as a professional wine taster before he founded the company in 1893, and that sequence, palate first and production second, shaped what Cecchi became: a house that grew through knowing what it was buying, and what each piece of land could produce. The company's historic headquarters sits in Castellina in Chianti, the hilltop village at the centre of the Chianti Classico DOCG, where the family settled in the 1970s and built the range outward from there.
Fourth-generation brothers Andrea and Cesare Cecchi now lead the business. By 2019, the estate portfolio covered 337 hectares of vines and produced approximately 8.5 million bottles a year, distributed across more than 65 countries. The scale is commercial, but the company's expansion has followed a clear territorial logic: acquire estates in appellations that matter, farm them with increasing environmental care, and keep vineyard lots separate through fermentation and ageing before blending at bottling.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Castellina in Chianti sits on a long ridge between the Pesa and Elsa valleys, roughly twenty kilometres south of Florence on the road toward Siena. The village is one of the three founding communes of the Chianti Classico DOCG, the central Tuscan appellation where Sangiovese is the required primary grape and where the combination of altitude, limestone-heavy soils, and warm days with cool nights gives the variety its characteristic grip and acidity.
That spread, from Chianti hilltops to Maremma coast to Montalcino to Umbrian vineyards, means the Cecchi portfolio reads as a traversal of central Italian red wine appellations rather than a deep study of one.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Vineyard lots are fermented and aged separately, then blended during bottling. For a producer working across multiple estates and appellations, this practice allows each parcel to be assessed on its own before the final wine is assembled. It is the method behind range differentiation at scale: the Chianti Classico from Villa Cerna carries different fruit character from the Morellino di Scansano at Val delle Rose, even though Sangiovese is the primary grape in both, because the lots were never homogenised in the cellar.
At Val delle Rose and Tenuta Alzatura, organic conversion means no synthetic herbicides, pesticides or fertilisers. The phytodepuration system at Castellina filters winery wastewater through planted reed beds before it re-enters the water table, a method that avoids chemical processing entirely.
Wines to know
The range in view
The Cecchi range maps the major central Italian red wine appellations rather than building a vertical hierarchy within one zone. Villa Cerna produces Chianti Classico DOCG from Sangiovese grown on alberese and galestro soils in Castellina. The wines carry the denomination's typical profile: moderate body, firm tannin from the calcareous soils, acidity that keeps the finish clean, and the characteristic dried cherry and herb notes of classic-zone Sangiovese.
Val delle Rose in Maremma produces Morellino di Scansano DOCG. Morellino is the local name for Sangiovese in Grosseto province, and the warmer coastal climate produces a rounder, more immediately approachable wine than the Chianti Classico: fuller in body, lower natural acidity, with darker fruit and softer tannin.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Chianti Classico DOCG from Villa Cerna. It is the wine that maps directly onto the company's historic roots in Castellina, grown on the calcareous clay soils of the Chianti Classico zone and made from Sangiovese with the lot-by-lot cellar approach the company applies across all estates. In the glass: dried cherry, a trace of dried herbs, medium body, firm tannin, and the kind of clean acid finish so the wine works with food rather than against it. No oak sweetness, no extracted weight.