Why it matters
The producer
In the Val di Chiana, midway between Siena and Arezzo, a Belgian lawyer named Jacques de Liedekerke bought a 61-hectare estate in the 1970s and named it after the Roman name for the nearby village of Lucignano. Most of those hectares are forest. The vines occupy the south-facing slopes, rooted in galestro, a rocky clay marl indigenous to the Apennines that appears in some of the best-regarded sites in Tuscany.
The estate now operates under de Liedekerke's grandson James Marshall-Lockyer, who took up winemaking in 2020 after completing a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford. His first vintage was 2021. The wines are bottled under the Toscana IGT designation and grouped by geology and bunch quality, with Sasso di Fata and Onda occupying the top single-vineyard category.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
The Val di Chiana is an ancient Etruscan valley. Tenuta Licinia sits near Lucignano, adjacent to the Castello di Calcione, roughly halfway between Siena and Arezzo. This position keeps the estate outside the best-known Tuscan appellations, but the galestro soils it works are the same rocky, well-drained marl that give their best to vineyards further west in Chianti Classico.
The vineyards face south. The exposure and the thin, freely draining galestro direct vine energy into the fruit rather than into leaf and stem, and they create the mineral and graphite qualities the producer identifies as signatures of the Sasso di Fata site in particular.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The planted vineyard covers either 5.5 hectares across four parcels, on the estate's own vineyard page, or 6.5 hectares as described by the importer DBG Italia. The remaining land is forest. The estate has held organic certification since 2012 and has worked biodynamically since 2021, using preparations including valerian, equisetum and chamomile.
Harvest timing is decided by tasting rather than laboratory measurement. Each small parcel is picked and fermented separately, which preserves the site differences before any blending decisions are made. In the cellar, fermentation temperatures are kept relatively cool, mechanical extraction is light, and macerations are shorter than is typical for the Bordeaux varieties at the top of the range. Sasso di Fata receives individual-berry hand sorting before fermentation.
Wines to know
The range in view
The range is organised by geology and bunch quality. At the top, Sasso di Fata and Onda are single-vineyard selections from the best parcels and the best bunches within them. Below that tier sits Montepolli, a red that draws on the estate's Bordeaux varieties. L'Isolato is made entirely from Sangiovese and moves on a silkier, more aromatic path than the Cabernet-led wines.
Sasso di Fata is built around Cabernet Sauvignon, with Cabernet Franc contributing to the blend. The wine's tannins come from the grape and the galestro subsoil rather than from heavy oak exposure, and the short, cool maceration keeps the extraction moderate. L'Isolato, by contrast, brings Sangiovese's red-fruit aromatic character and a quieter tannin frame, described in a recent tasting as silky rather than muscular.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Sasso di Fata is the bottle that shows what the estate's galestro soils and light-extraction approach actually produce. It is a Cabernet Sauvignon-led wine from the top single-vineyard tier, sorted berry by berry at harvest, fermented cool and briefly macerated, then aged in 500-litre oak and concrete. In the glass it opens with rose and rosehip rather than the blackcurrant and cedar that most Tuscan Cabernet delivers, and the finish carries a mineral, graphite edge sourced from the subsoil. The 2022 is the ripest and most immediate of the available vintages; the 2021, if it can be found, shows the wine in a more mineral and taut register.