Fattoria Il Casalone

Manual harvest before the cellar

The harvest starts by hand, with Pepi Lignana working as winemaker at Fattoria Il Casalone in Orbetello Scalo, Orbetello, before the fruit reaches the cellar. Pepi Lignana keeps the first judgment in the vineyard, where the team selects grapes manually and sends them on for sorting. The family structure around the estate has held to the same trade since 1960, and its language is practical: work, land, artistry, eco-sustainability. At this scale, those words have to survive weather, picking decisions, oak, bottling, and storage. The estate sits in the Tuscan Maremma, on more than 300 hectares facing Monte Argentario and the Orbetello lagoon, with the coast close enough to keep the place visibly tied to salt air and lowland light. Lignana’s role is not presented as a break from lineage, but as its current hand. He works within a cellar program that names continuity as a method, vintage after vintage, without turning the family past into decoration.

Cabernet in French oak

The clearest view of the cellar comes through Il Cucchetto, a Maremma Toscana D.O.C. red built from 85% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Petit Verdot. The grapes are hand-harvested in mid-to-late September, then the must is vinified for 10 days before racking. Maturation follows in French oak barriques for over 18 months, with a further 6 months in bottle before release. Production is limited to 6,000 bottles, in 0.75 L Bordeaux-style bottles and Magnum formats. That sequence gives the wine its architecture: selection by hand, a defined vinification window, oak for structure, then bottle time before the cork is pulled. Lignana also names French oak vats and barriques for the noble reds, and speaks of bottling and subsequent storage in healthy, thermo-conditioned environments. The same portfolio stretches across Leopoldino Vermentino, Poggio Colombi Cabernet, Don José Cabernet Franc, Il Cucchetto Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pitorsino Viognier, with still white and still red held inside one estate grammar.

The cellar beside the lagoon

The place around the work stays quiet. Fattoria Il Casalone is also a rural farm stay, with gardens, an outdoor pool, and apartment-style rooms set into the estate rather than pressed against the cellar door. The room here is not a dining room but a countryside rhythm: vineyard decisions, storage rooms, verandas, the low presence of Monte Argentario across the lagoon. Guests encounter the estate at a slower distance, through paths, garden edges, and the calm of a working property that does not need to perform industry. For the wine, that setting matters less as scenery than as pace. Cabernet can be impatient in the wrong hands. Here, the method gives it time in barrique, then time in bottle, before Il Cucchetto leaves the cellar.