Sergio Manetti and his liquid protest

With Le Pergole Torte came out, Sergio Manetti created a wine that was extremely innovative for the time, one made from only with Sangiovese.

It has almost been 19 years since the sad day when Sergio Manetti passed away on November 14, 2000.  He had been ill for some time and towards the end could not even speak. But he continued to write and did so very well. This because Sergio was not only a wine producer, he was above all a cultured and refined man, one who even had a column on gastronomy for the newly established Florence edition of the La Repubblica newspaper. He had been producing wine since 1971 at his estate in Montevertine with the help of Giulio Gambelli, a top-notch taster and great winemaker ahead of his time. He was an assertive and at times even polemic man of strong convictions.

When Carlo Petrini, who then complied the Gambero Rosso Slow Food Guide, told him that his 1993 Le Pergole Torte would not receive their top three-glasses rating but only two glasses, he told him that he could take his two glasses and stick them up his… . Petrini took it badly, with good reason, so much so that the friends they had in common, including yours truly, had to step in as peacemakers.

Today, Le Pergole Torte, a great red wine made from only Sangiovese, is considered a cornerstone of Tuscan tradition. It is matured for the most part in large barrels and made with grapes from a vineyard in Radda in Chianti situated at an altitude of 400m above sea level neat the Volpaia road. When it first came out, I think in 1975, it replaced his Chianti Classico Riserva. “Do you really think I would ruin my wine by adding white grapes? I do what I think is best and if those of Chianti Classico don’t want me as an association member, then I will make a table wine without a DOC classification. Who cares about being DOC!”. I can still hear his words ringing in my ears, his hoarse voice and seeing his face turn red in anger.

Looking back, Le Pergole Torte was truly an innovative wine, almost a revolutionary one. A protest in liquid form, an emblem of what quality should be beyond what was traditional in Chianti, which was never in favor of using just one grape. At least until Sergio came around. For sure, there had been previous attempts to go in this direction. Enzo Morganti and Gambelli at San Felice produced Vigorello in 1968, which was made only from Sangiovese. Then, in 1974, Fabrizio Bianchi made Sangioveto in Montsanto. But they did this quietly, almost trying not to be noticed. But not Sergio. He defended his decision tooth and nail, no matter what the cost.

His second wine, Montevertine, always 100% Sangiovese, for years was called Montevertine Riserva even though Sergio knew that, according to regulations, he could not use that term on the label. “I pay the fine every year, it’s not that much in the end because that wine is better than almost all the Chianti Classico Riserva around and I’ll call it for what it is”. He would not back down.

Sergio was a great friend of Gino Veronelli, they were almost the same age Sergio being born in 1921 and Gino in ’27. They had many things common except for one. Strange as it may seem, Sergio loved Coca Cola while Gino thought it was the devil in a bottle. I don’t know how many times they argued about this.

Tomorrow on DoctorWine, with the collaboration of Livia Berardelli, we will present a vertical tasting of Le Pergole Torte from 1996 to 2016. Almost all the vintages are from when Martino Manetti was at the helm of the estate, first assisted by Gambelli and then by Paolo Salvi, the most “Gabelli-esque” of Italian enologists. I regret that at the time I as was not able to award a three-glasses rating to Le Pergole Torte 1997. The panel responsible for Chianti Classico evaluated it too hastily. That wine came out a year before Sergio died and he would have appreciated the gesture that unfortunately I could not give him.