Biography
An awarding-winning winery, recognized at Vinitaly, Italy’s major wine fair, as Italy’s finest cellar for eleven straight years, Castello Banfi has deserved the recognition it has gained because it represents a model enterprise in the field of wine, capable of reconciling, at the highest possible level, excellent quality and very large production volumes: it is the largest estate in Montalcino with over 7000 total acres, including more than 2100 planted to vines, and its annual production is over 11.5 million bottles. The creators of Banfi were two Italian-Americans, brothers John and Harry Mariani. When they began to purchase land in Montalcino in 1978, they had already been the directors, for over fifteen years, of Banfi Vintners, the largest wine-importing firm in the USA, inherited from their father Giovanni, of Italian origin, who had founded it in 1919. Their ambition? To produce high quality Italian wine for international markets on their own. The house is different from others in Montalcino: it does not produce one limited type of wine, but an entire range of wines at different prices and with different styles. At the highest quality level of the estate, in fact, there is not only the Brunello di Montalcino Poggio all’Oro, produced form the finest vineyard plots, but also other ambitious red wines: Excelsus, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and Summus, a Sangiovese mixed with Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, two Super Tuscans which are marketed under the Sant’Antimo appellation. The most American-influenced part of Banfi is the cellar, an enormous and completely modern structure which is continuously updated with the most advanced technology on the market. The Mariani brothers have not forgotten, however, that wine is culture as well, and in the Poggio alle Mura castle, a former fortress of the Republic of Siena, they have installed a museum of glassware which shows all of the stages of the development of the bottle, from the ancient world to modern times.