Today’s Wine Wednesday post is about a wine from the Pietro Beconcini winery. I was introduced to this winery through a top notch Woman in Wine in Italy, Stefania Tacconi. I was doing an instragram live series on Women in Wine and she introduced me to Eva Bellagamba. Pietro’s campanion and colleague in the avventure that is their winery.

In my interview with Eva which you can find here, we spoke about a range of topics. They sent me a couple of interesting bottles of their wine. At the recent Altra Toscana event in Florence as part of the Anteprime Toscane, I was able to try Reciso, a Terre di Pisa Sangiovese again. I loved the pure expression of Sangiovese that came through. Apparently Pietro has done a lot of work on specific clones and how they match his terroir. The effort shows in his beautiful, elegant Sangiovese. His vines grow on white clay-rich soils that has marine fossils and are from the Pliocene era. The Sangiovese was deep in color, more so than many other versions of this signature Tuscan grape. With great acidity and red/black fruit, and floral notes, leather, some spice and hints of cocoa. The wine was persistent, balanced, and had a very long finish. Reciso comes from old vines from San Minato in the Pisa Province. He uses indigenous yeast and the Sangiovese grapes macerate on their skins for five weeks. The wine matures in big barrels of Slavonian oak for two years and then one year in the bottle before it is released. This wine is really considered a Sangiovese Cru because it comes from a 2 Ha vineyard.

Pietro came to the family winery following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. His grandfather had been a Mezzadro or sharecropper on the Marchesi Ridolfi estate. His grandfather was able to end that contract and start out on his own. Initially he focused on various agricultural products while Pietro’s father focused on viticulture and winemaking when he took the reins. Pietro found Tempranillo vines on his land too and makes them into some very interesting wines but this post is about his incredible Sangiovese and is dedicated to Eva who is an integral part of the winery and its mission.

The Terre di Pisa Consortium is one I have written about a little but probably not enough. The DOC was delineated in 2011 and the Consortium was founded in 2018 The area around the city of Pisa has both rolling hills and flat lands. It is crossed by forests and olive trees. Altitudes range from 250 to 400 meters above sea level. The soils tend to have silt and sand closer to the coast with lots of fossils and more clay and limestone as we move away from the sea. Fossils exist here because the area was underwater in a previous era. There is a lot to learn about these wineries and to discover. I look forward to visiting on a future trip. I have written about other producers from the region, notably here about Fattoria Fibbiano and their Ciliegiolo.