GIOVANNA TIEZZI and STEFANO BORSA

PACINA

PACINA

A veritable legend in the natural wine world, and also featured in the beloved “Natural Resistance” film by Jonathan Nossiter, Pacina, the ancient Etruscan name for the god of wine, is a stunningly beautiful self-contained and perfectly sustainable winery in the heart of Tuscany’s Chianti near Castelnuovo Berardenga, between Florence and Siena, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a generations-long story of a family’s love for their land and their mission of being loving custodians of terroir, as well as making astonishingly stunning natural wines since well before the definition even existed.

The farm, now led by Giovanna Tiezzi and her husband Stefano Borsa and in Giovanna’s family for 5 generations, sees at its center an enchanting 10th century former monastery and extends for 60 hectares, of which only 10 are cultivated with vines. The remainder sees untouched woods, grains, olive groves and orchards. In Giovanna’s own words: “Pacina is a small enclave, a place that has always respected nature and its diversity. It houses various habitats and types of forest.

A variety of crops is grown, with respect for the soil: the fields are alternately cultivated and left fallow in order to maintain the richness and diversity of the natural ecosystems and the flora and fauna they contain.” Pacina is also a story of stubborn passion for the sincerity and purity of their wines, to the point of renouncing in 2008 the Chianti DOCG appellation because their wines did not conform to internationalised standards and their Chianti was released a full 5 years after harvest and not the prescribed 2.