Podere Le Ripi Cru 'Bonsai' 2019 Igt Toscana OWC

Bonsai / Organic-Biodinamic from real Bonsai grapevines

Concept of a Bonsai wine:The decision was easy: my plants will get no fertilizer at all and they will be planted so dense, in order not to get nutrients in the upper layers of the soil. They have to make deep roots in a short time span… or die...

A vineyard can produce good grapes only after 35 years.> told me an old winegrower in Burgundy. I wondered:

Therefore I decided to try something new and innovative, I forced my plants to go through many different geological layers in a short time span, by planting them in such a high density system. This gave them a single chance in order to survive: go deeper with the roots or die.

All my consultants told me I was crazy and that the plants would simply die

The opposite happened: the mortality of Bonsai stopped at 8%. All the other vineyards had an average of 30%!

We gave every plant a thiny support pole of acacia and we grew the vines with goblet vine training system, called in Italy “alberello” and meaning literally "small tree". Two and a half years later, with their third bud, they made the first barrique of wine, the Bonsai Sangiovese 2007.

I could not believe it: none of the vineyards I had planted had even shown a grape before the fourth bud!

The Bonsai experiment, started in 2005, was a tenth of an hectare and the production was roughly 3.300 kg per hectare from the very beginning!