Italy · Chianti Hills

Casa Vinicola Luigi Cecchi & Figli

Tuscan family wine house founded in 1893 by professional taster Luigi Cecchi, headquartered in Castellina in Chianti with four Tuscan estates and one in Umbria spanning Chianti Classico, Maremma, Brunello di Montalcino and Sagrantino di Montefalco.

The producer

Luigi Cecchi came to winemaking through his palate. He had spent years as a professional wine taster before founding the company in 1893, and that sequence, palate first and production second, shaped what Cecchi became: a house that grew by knowing what each piece of land could produce. The historic headquarters sits in Castellina in Chianti, the hilltop village at the centre of the Chianti Classico DOCG, where the family settled in the 1970s and built the range outward from there. Fourth-generation brothers Andrea and Cesare Cecchi now lead the business across four Tuscan estates and one in Umbria.

The range maps the major central Italian red wine appellations rather than building a vertical hierarchy within one zone. Villa Cerna anchors the Chianti Classico side, with Sangiovese grown on alberese and galestro soils in Castellina. Val delle Rose in the Maremma, acquired in 1996, covers the warmer coastal zone where the same grape produces Morellino di Scansano with rounder, fuller character. A six-hectare Montalcino estate beside Sant'Antimo Abbey, added in 2018, brings Brunello di Montalcino into the range. Tenuta Alzatura in Umbria completes the portfolio with Sagrantino di Montefalco, the densest and most tannic wine in the house. Vineyard lots are fermented and aged separately, then blended at bottling, keeping estate and appellation character distinct through the cellar.

Known for

Multi-appellation Tuscan range anchored by Sangiovese across Chianti Classico, Maremma and Brunello di Montalcino; environmental pioneer for phytodepuration of winery wastewater in Tuscany.

Notable facts

The story

The Reed Beds at Castellina

Before winery wastewater management became routine in the Tuscan appellation zones, Cecchi installed a phytodepuration system at their Castellina facility. Instead of a chemical processing plant, the winery ran its effluent through a series of reed-bed filters and planted wetland channels, letting the water pass through living vegetation before it returned to the ground clean. The Tuscany Region took notice and awarded the company its Toscana Ecoefficiente prize. In 2012, the family extended the same system to Val delle Rose, the Maremma estate they had acquired sixteen years earlier. A large winery moving wastewater through plants and reeds rather than tanks and chemicals was unusual enough at the time to earn a regional award. The system still sits in the valley below Castellina, filtering water the same way.

From the atlas

Casa Vinicola Luigi Cecchi & Figli

At A Glance

The Producer

Luigi Cecchi came to winemaking through his palate. He had worked as a professional wine taster before he founded the company in 1893, and that sequence, palate first and production second, shaped what Cecchi became: a house that grew through knowing what it was buying, and what each piece of land could produce. The company's historic headquarters sits in Castellina in Chianti, the hilltop village at the centre of the Chianti Classico DOCG, where the family settled in the 1970s and built the range outward from there.

Fourth-generation brothers Andrea and Cesare Cecchi now lead the business. By 2019, the estate portfolio covered 337 hectares of vines and produced approximately 8.5 million bottles a year, distributed across more than 65 countries. The scale is commercial, but the company's expansion has followed a clear territorial logic: acquire estates in appellations that matter, farm them with increasing environmental care, and keep vineyard lots separate through fermentation and ageing before blending at bottling.

Place

Castellina in Chianti sits on a long ridge between the Pesa and Elsa valleys, roughly twenty kilometres south of Florence on the road toward Siena. The village is one of the three founding communes of the Chianti Classico DOCG, the central Tuscan appellation where Sangiovese is the required primary grape and where the combination of altitude, limestone-heavy soils, and warm days with cool nights gives the variety its characteristic grip and acidity.

The Cecchi range extends well beyond Castellina. Val delle Rose in Maremma, acquired in 1996, sits in the coastal lowlands of Grosseto province, a warmer, flatter zone where Sangiovese ripens more fully and the Morellino di Scansano DOCG is the local denomination. The Montalcino estate, added in 2018, occupies six hectares on the southern slopes of the hill town where Brunello di Montalcino DOCG places Sangiovese Grosso, the local clone, in the most age-worthy red wines of the denomination. Tenuta Alzatura in Umbria sits within the Montefalco zone, where Sagrantino, a dense, tannic native grape, produces wines with a different weight from anything in Tuscany.

That spread, from Chianti hilltops to Maremma coast to Montalcino to Umbrian vineyards, means the Cecchi portfolio reads as a traversal of central Italian red wine appellations rather than a deep study of one.

Soil And Site

Villa Rosa, the estate acquired in Castellina in Chianti in 2015, gives the clearest picture of Chianti Classico soil character in the Cecchi range. The soils there are calcareous and clay-based, combining alberese, the dense, hard limestone rock typical of the central Chianti zone, with schistous galestro, the fractured, lighter schist that drains quickly and limits vine vigour. That combination produces Sangiovese with firm tannin and good supporting acidity, the two elements that keep Chianti Classico coherent as a style across producers.

In Maremma, the soils at Val delle Rose shift toward heavier clay with maritime influence, which means riper, fuller-bodied wine from the same grape variety. The Montalcino estate beside Sant'Antimo Abbey sits on the southern, warmer flank of the Brunello appellation, where soils are predominantly clay and sand, and where Sangiovese Grosso typically reaches full phenolic maturity.

Story

The company Luigi Cecchi founded in 1893 spent its first decades as a wine trading and blending house before the family's own estate holdings took shape. The move to Castellina in Chianti in the 1970s planted the company firmly in Chianti Classico territory, and the historic Villa Cerna estate became the anchor of the Tuscan range.

Andrea and Cesare Cecchi, who took over as fourth-generation leaders, pursued a different strategy from the consolidation approach common among large Tuscan houses. Rather than deepening one appellation, they extended across several. Val delle Rose in the Maremma arrived in 1996, opening the coastal Tuscan range. Villa Rosa in Castellina followed in 2015, adding approximately 90 acres and new vineyard land in the home commune. The Montalcino acquisition in 2018, six hectares beside Sant'Antimo Abbey, brought the company into Brunello territory, one of Italy's most competitive and expensive appellations, through a small but precisely positioned foothold.

Running alongside the geographic expansion was a parallel commitment to environmental practice. The company installed a phytodepuration wastewater system at Castellina before environmental regulation standardised such measures across the appellation zones. By 2021, Val delle Rose and Tenuta Alzatura in Umbria had both converted to certified organic farming.

Vineyards And Cellar

Vineyard lots are fermented and aged separately, then blended during bottling. For a producer working across multiple estates and appellations, this practice allows each parcel to be assessed on its own before the final wine is assembled. It is the method behind range differentiation at scale: the Chianti Classico from Villa Cerna carries different fruit character from the Morellino di Scansano at Val delle Rose, even though Sangiovese is the primary grape in both, because the lots were never homogenised in the cellar.

At Val delle Rose and Tenuta Alzatura, organic conversion means no synthetic herbicides, pesticides or fertilisers. The phytodepuration system at Castellina filters winery wastewater through planted reed beds before it re-enters the water table, a method that avoids chemical processing entirely.

For the Montalcino estate, Brunello di Montalcino DOCG regulations require a minimum of five years ageing before release, with at least two years in oak. Cecchi's six-hectare Montalcino property is small by the standards of the appellation, and the wines produced there represent a minor fraction of total output, but the long ageing requirements shape the cellar calendar for that estate significantly.

Wines

The Cecchi range maps the major central Italian red wine appellations rather than building a vertical hierarchy within one zone. Villa Cerna produces Chianti Classico DOCG from Sangiovese grown on alberese and galestro soils in Castellina. The wines carry the denomination's typical profile: moderate body, firm tannin from the calcareous soils, acidity that keeps the finish clean, and the characteristic dried cherry and herb notes of classic-zone Sangiovese.

Val delle Rose in Maremma produces Morellino di Scansano DOCG. Morellino is the local name for Sangiovese in Grosseto province, and the warmer coastal climate produces a rounder, more immediately approachable wine than the Chianti Classico: fuller in body, lower natural acidity, with darker fruit and softer tannin.

The Montalcino estate produces Brunello di Montalcino DOCG from Sangiovese Grosso, where the long mandatory ageing, minimum five years from harvest, builds complexity and tannin grip that the younger Tuscan wines do not carry. Six hectares is a small holding in an appellation of many large estates, and production is limited.

Tenuta Alzatura in Umbria works with both Montefalco Rosso DOC and Sagrantino di Montefalco DOCG. Sagrantino, permitted only in this small Umbrian zone, produces wines with notably dense tannin and dark fruit, a very different profile from Sangiovese and the furthest stylistic point in the Cecchi range from the lighter Chianti Classico wines.

In The Glass

Cecchi's Chianti Classico from Villa Cerna carries the clean fruit and firm grip characteristic of Castellina. Sangiovese grown on galestro and alberese delivers dried cherry, dried herb, and a streak of iron-edged mineral character. The tannin is present without being coarse, and the acidity keeps the wine fresh through the finish, making it a natural match for food.

The Morellino di Scansano from Val delle Rose sits at the other end of the Sangiovese spectrum: richer in colour, softer in tannin, with plum and tobacco fruit and a broader mid-palate. The coastal warmth in Maremma fills out the grape in a way that cool Chianti hillsides do not, and the wine drinks earlier and more easily.

Brunello di Montalcino from the Montalcino estate is a longer proposition. Young, the wine shows dark fruit, firm dry tannin, and the elevated acidity typical of Sangiovese Grosso at altitude. With the mandatory ageing behind it, dried fruit, leather, and a drying, persistent finish emerge. This is wine built for the table and, ideally, for time in the cellar.

Sagrantino di Montefalco is the densest wine in the range. Deep colour, very high tannin, blackberry and dark chocolate fruit, and a long, grippy finish. It requires food and usually benefits from several years in bottle before the tannin integrates.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Chianti Classico DOCG from Villa Cerna. It is the wine that maps directly onto the company's historic roots in Castellina, grown on the calcareous clay soils of the Chianti Classico zone and made from Sangiovese with the lot-by-lot cellar approach the company applies across all estates. In the glass: dried cherry, a trace of dried herbs, medium body, firm tannin, and the kind of clean acid finish so the wine works with food rather than against it. No oak sweetness, no extracted weight. It is the version of Sangiovese that the Castellina ridge produces when the grape is not pushed, and it gives a clear read on what the estate and the company are doing.

Anecdote

Before winery wastewater management became routine in the Tuscan appellation zones, Cecchi installed a phytodepuration system at their Castellina facility. Instead of a chemical processing plant, the winery ran its effluent through a series of reed-bed filters and planted wetland channels, letting the water pass through living vegetation before it returned to the ground clean. The Tuscany Region took notice and awarded the company its Toscana Ecoefficiente prize. In 2012, the family extended the same system to Val delle Rose, the Maremma estate they had acquired sixteen years earlier. A large winery moving wastewater through plants and reeds rather than tanks and chemicals was unusual enough at the time to win a regional award. It still sits in the valley below Castellina, filtering water the same way.

Final Word

Cecchi is a Tuscan multi-estate house whose range follows the map of central Italian red wine appellations from Chianti Classico hills to Maremma coast to Montalcino to Umbrian vineyards. The founding logic, palate before production, has been extended across four generations into territorial breadth and a growing environmental care. The Chianti Classico from Villa Cerna remains the clearest point of entry: Sangiovese on limestone, lot-separated, built for the table.

Sources

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