Fattoria Pomona

Grass between the rows

Grass grows between the rows while Monica Raspi works as winemaker at Fattoria Pomona in Castellina in Chianti, keeping Sangiovese at the center of the estate’s rhythm. She came to wine from veterinary medicine, closing her clinic in 2007, studying enology, and taking on the owner-and-winemaker role here the same year. The change of material did not discard the discipline. Diagnosis became ripeness, fermentation, balance, and the slow reading of a vineyard over time.

The family line gives the place its depth. Monica has lived at Pomona since 1991, and the property carries an older memory still: her great-great-grandfather bought the site in 1890, when it was an old brick factory, and her parents began making wine there in 1982. Fattoria Pomona’s public date is 1899, but the working story is less a single founding moment than an accumulation of hands, land, and decisions. Monica has described it plainly: “Fattoria Pomona is my land, my cellar, my place of action (and testing).” That sentence fits the station. The vineyard and cellar are not separate stages; they are the same thought carried from soil to glass.

Organic farming as the method

The estate farms organically, with certification on the label since 2012, and the vineyard work is specific enough to feel like a method rather than a claim. Grass stays between the rows. Green manure enters the cycle. Clover and barley are planted for the soil, not for display. The ridge faces east, with a maximum altitude of 350 meters above sea level, and the surrounding forests, plants, and streams temper the site. Around six hectares of vines sit in soils that include alberese, limestone, and clay.

Sangiovese leads the program, joined by Colorino and Cabernet Sauvignon, with Chianti Classico as the frame. The estate also works in a compact range that includes Chianti Classico, Chianti Classico Riserva, an IGT, Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Trebbiano white. Annual production is roughly 16,000 bottles, which keeps the scale close to the bench-side decisions Monica makes vintage by vintage. One published cellar detail points to aging of about eight months in Slavonian oak, with 325-liter casks named for that regimen. The house does not lay out a full cellar map, so the truest available picture remains the one built from farming practice, vessel clue, and the wines themselves: structure without heaviness, drinkability as a standard.

A cellar in the old factory

The place keeps the quiet of a working farm. Vineyards, olive trees, and woodland gather around the former brick factory, now carrying the cellar and tasting spaces in a rustic, comfortable register. The room is intimate rather than staged; it belongs to the estate’s daily work before it belongs to visitors. Outside, the vineyard visit is not scenery laid over production, because the same rows set the terms for the wine.

That closeness shapes the tasting room. The pace is small-group, guided, and private when arranged that way, with the cellar near enough that the conversation can stay tethered to tanks, barrels, and harvest decisions rather than drift into performance. Zoe, the dachshund mentioned in accounts of the estate, gives the hospitality its own domestic note, but the center remains Monica’s practical register: land, cellar, action, testing.

Drinkability as a working standard

Monica’s line, “My idea of wine is drinkability,” is not a softening of the craft. At Pomona, it asks the wine to stay legible: Sangiovese with structure, Chianti Classico with clarity, and a glass that does not need force to make its point. Her named body of work includes Chianti Classico Riserva 2016, Chianti Classico 2017, and Toscana Piero Rosso 2018. If the next vintage follows the same discipline, it will begin where Pomona usually begins, in Monica Raspi’s rows of Sangiovese.