They're old hands at wine, the Mazzei family, who pass the title of Marchesi from father to son. The incumbent Marchesi, Francesco Mazzei, is the 24th generation. He's visiting Seattle this week (his fourth trip to the US this year) and stopped in at Mondello in Magnolia with some of his best wines. These are the very best of Chianti Classico, the strictly delimited zone in the heart of Tuscany, between Florence and Siena.
The Mazzei family have been growing grapes on the same hillside in central Tuscany since 1435. (Yes, that's right, three generations before Columbus.) From the terrace of their estate, Castello Fonterutoli, in the commune of Castellina-in-Chianti, you can see the towers of Siena.
I had the pleasure of visiting Fonterutoli earlier this year on a trip sponsored by the association of Chianti Classico producers and it was a particular pleasure to meet up with Francesco a couple of days ago and retaste the wines. (We're on a first-name basis now! Wine does that.) I wrote three pieces about the trip:
- The first was called Under the Tuscan Sunset and introduced the Mazzei and Antinori properties.
- The second, The Art of Living in Tuscany, described the charms of modern-day Italy.
- And the third, Contemplating Chianti Classico, confronted the problems of dividing Italy's huge wine production into increasingly tiny segments, to the extent that even wine producers from neighboring appellations can no longer discern the differences.
Mazzei sells several wines in the US, its number one export market. (Also high on the list: Canada, Sweden, Germany, the UK). There's a wine from their new Sicilian estate, Zisola, a deeply flavorful Nero d'Avola. Even their "generic" Fontefutoli label is vinified with grapes from all the estate's 120 parcels of Sangiovese. The top selections go into the "Castello" bottling. The blended Siepi, half Sangiovese, half Merlot, was named the top wine in Tuscany by the prestigious Gambero Rosso magazine.
Then there's the wine labelled "Philip," named for Filippo Mazzei, an ancestor who knew Thomas Jefferson, launched his vineyard at Monticello and continued to advise him on viticulture and wine making. Students from the art school in Florence designed the label.
In 1980, Philip Mazzei got his own stamp as a US Patriot. And it was this Mazzei, by the way, who actually wrote the words that would guide Jefferson's new United States of America: "All Men Are Created Equal."
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