Why it matters
The producer
The Frescobaldi family have been making wine in Tuscany since the early 1300s. Before that, they were one of Florence's great merchant-banking dynasties, and it shows in the archive: the family holds contracts with European courts dating to the 13th century, supplied wine to the English and Papal courts in the 15th and 16th centuries, and kept commercial accounts with the workshops of Donatello, Brunelleschi, and Michelozzo Michelozzi.
The wine operation grew from that merchant base. The family's oldest agricultural estate, Tenuta Castiglioni, has been in their hands since around the year 1000, with documented wine production by 1300. Their best-known estate, Tenuta Nipozzano, has Renaissance purchase records that name Donatello and Michelozzo Michelozzi among buyers. Today the 30th generation oversees eight estates spread across Tuscany.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
The three estates that anchor the range each sit in a different corner of Tuscan wine geography.
Nipozzano is in Chianti Rufina, the appellation that runs northeast of Florence into the Arno valley hills. Rufina is Chianti's highest and coolest subzone, and Sangiovese grown there holds more acidity and takes longer to ripen than the same grape grown in warmer parts of the region. That translates to wines with more grip and more potential for ageing on the riserva tier.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The primary grape across all three key estates is Sangiovese, grown at different altitudes and exposures to produce wines with different weights and acidity levels. Castiglioni's lower-elevation Sangiovese ripens more fully and produces wines with softer tannin. Nipozzano's hill Sangiovese, in the cooler Rufina climate, retains more acidity and builds the grip that the riserva tier is aged to develop. Perano's amphitheatre Sangiovese, at 500 metres in Chianti Classico, falls between those two poles: altitude-cooled but southwest-facing, with more concentration than lower Classico sites.
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, and Pinot Nero have grown across several estates since 1855. These varieties appear in single-estate wines and blends, though exact percentages for current bottlings are not confirmed in the verified sources.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range is built estate by estate, with each property producing wines that carry its geographic appellation.
Nipozzano Riserva is from the Chianti Rufina estate. Sangiovese-led, aged beyond the standard tier, and carrying the cooler Rufina character of higher acidity and firmer tannin, it is the wine most consistently connected to the family's long history at that specific site. The base Nipozzano Chianti Rufina is the accessible tier from the same estate.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Nipozzano Riserva is the right first bottle. It is Sangiovese from Chianti Rufina, the appellation northeast of Florence where the family has documented wine production since the Renaissance. Riserva level means longer ageing before release, and that time in wood and bottle rounds the tannin and deepens the fruit without softening the firm acidity that Rufina's altitude produces. The wine is firm, savoury, and long, with dried cherry, dried herb, and a finish that holds. It is the bottle most directly tied to the seven-century Nipozzano record, and it shows what Sangiovese does when grown on cool hill ground and given time.