With the Decree of February 7, 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry officially approved the VdC2 and VdM1 clones, selected and developed within the Bibbiano Estate under the initial push of Giulio Gambelli.
A decades-long journey to enhance the genetic heritage of a fundamental and typical grape variety of Tuscan viticulture comes to an end: Sangiovese Grosso . Protagonist Tenuta di Bibbiano thus reaches a historic milestone.
It is, in fact, an important recognition for the historic Chianti Classico winery, which has always guarded and handed down a winemaking legacy closely linked to the figure of Giulio Gambelli, whose birth centenary is being celebrated this year.
It was precisely the “master taster” who brought to Bibbiano, in the mid-1950s, a biotype of Sangiovese Grosso from Montalcino, giving rise to selection work that today sees its completion with the ministerial registration of these two clones.
A long journey of research and enhancement
The journey that led to the homologation of the two clones began in the late 1990s, with a careful mapping of the original vineyard of Vigna del Capannino, one of the cru or, rather, historical climats of Tenuta di Bibbiano. The work, carried out in collaboration with Professor Giovan Battista Mattii, Dr. Paolo Storchiand the estate’s internal collaborators, made it possible to identify several normotypes among the vines originally brought in by Giulio Gambelli, selecting some of them for the subsequent approval process.
A few years later, the same analysis was also conducted on the Sangiovese Grosso vines , again of Gambellian origin, this time present in the company’s other important cru, namely the Vigne di Montornello, allowing the identification of a second clone worthy of selection and then submitted to the homologation process.
The approval process for Sangiovese clones.
The selection and certification process, based on rigorous protocols of genetic, agronomic and enological analysis, took more than two decades of research. In parallel, plant material derived from the Capannino Vineyard was also subject to mass propagation, allowing the production of more than 30,000 rootstocks and the replanting of the entire vineyard.
The words of Tommaso Marocchesi Marzi
“I am particularly pleased and proud of the successful outcome of this more than 10-year process, aware that I have achieved an important cultural and oenological result,” says Tommaso Marrocchesi Marzi, fifth generation of the family that has owned Tenuta di Bibbiano since 1865.– For this I can only thank Professor Giovan Battista Mattii and Dr. Paolo Storchi for their tenacity.”
The homologation of the VdC2 and VdM1 clones represents a fundamental step in the protection and enhancement of the viticultural identity of the Bibbiano Estate, confirming the winery’s central role in researching and preserving the genetic heritage of Sangiovese Grosso in Chianti Classico, as well as a tribute to the figure of Giulio Gambelli and to the memory of the previous generations of the family who had the privilege of working with him.
PRODUCER
