Sometimes it takes a special event to nudge you to take another look at a familiar winery or wine region. That’s what recently happened to us with the wines of Tuscany in general and San Felice in particular.

A Tuscan Wine Giro

Our old friend Peter and new friend Gina are newlyweds planning their first visit to Italy. They’ve booked a house near Montalcino for a week. Did we have any tips? Yes, of course, we love talking about Italy and Italian wine, so we met over Sunday lunch on the patio. Brianna, Peter’s daughter, also joined us.

We decided to feature San Felice wines because they have wineries in several Tuscan zones (San Felice in Chianti Classico, Belle’Aja in Bolgheri, and Campogiovanni in Montalcino) and so can represent the diversity of the region’s wines very well. As a bonus, the Campogiovanni winery would be easy for Peter and Gina to visit during their stay.

The lunch and wine pairings were great. We began with In Avane Chardonnay Toscano IGT just to show that even a familiar international grape variety can have a distinctive Tuscan twist. Then we moved on to the Bell’Aja Bolgheri Bianco, which is a white blend built around Vermentino, a grape variety our friends hadn’t tasted before. Although many people equate Tuscany with red wines, the white options are there and delicious.

The Red and the White

Red wines? It was time to compare and contrast two interestingly different styles: the Borgo Chianti Classico (a blend of Sangiovese and Pugnitello) and the Campogiovanni Brunello di Montalcino (Sangiovese all the way). The wines were very different and showed just how much there was to explore within the San Felice range and, by extension, within Tuscany, too.

The lunch was a success and we can’t wait for Peter and Gina to get back from their trip and tell us all about their new discoveries. In the meantime, Sue and I have rediscovered another of the San Felice wines. Our garden is producing eggplant and tomatoes right now, so our variation on pasta alla Norma was on the menu a few days after the lunch. The wine we picked was the San Felice Pugnitello Toscana IGT and it was a perfect match. Pugnitello is an ancient Tuscan grape variety that San Felice has worked hard to revive as a varietal wine and as part of the Chianti Classico mix. We really loved the depth and bright acidity of the single-varietal wine, which was perfect to cut through the richness of the pasta sauce.

You know, these San Felice wines are all really excellent, Sue noted as we were finishing the last of the Pugnitello. Delicious, distinctive, not a single false note. I’m glad we had an excuse to rediscover them and share them with special friends.

Generational Thinking at San Felice

The rediscovery of San Felice’s wine gave me an excuse to look more deeply into San Felice, the wine company. Like the famous Antinori winery, San Felice can trace its origins back hundreds of years. Unlike Antinori, however, it is not family-owned. For more than 50 years Società Agricola San Felice S.p.A. has been part of the Allianz Group, a multinational insurance and financial services company headquartered in Germany.

Many people (including me) agree with Piero Antinori that the wine business is well-suited to family ownership because long-term generational thinking has advantages over quarterly-statement thinking in the wine world.  This is perhaps why a disproportionate number of winery firms, including many of the largest and most famous, are in family hands.

But family ownership is neither necessary nor sufficient for success in wine. Sue and I have visited many cooperatives, for example, that seem to think in terms of generations (the generations of their grower family members), some after suffering the disastrous consequences of short-term strategies.

And there are some financial firms, like Allianz, that have married the generation thinking of their businesses (products like pensions and life insurance, for example) to the generational requirements of the wine game. Allianz is not the only firm of its type in global wine. The financial giant AXA Millésimes, for example, owns chateaux in Bordeaux and wineries in Portugal, Hungary, and the United States. TIAA, the company that administers my university retirement fund, is one of the largest vineyard owners in Napa Valley. The long-term thinking required for pension investment is remarkably consistent with the generational thinking that  is one key to success in wine.

Looking more deeply, I am impressed with how Allianz has invested in and developed San Felice both in terms of the vineyards and wines that impressed us so much, but also now the development of tourism and hospitality programs such as Borgo San Felice Resort.

Cheers to Peter and Gina. I hope they enjoyed their Tuscan adventure. I know they will enjoy the wines they discover there. Thanks for helping us rediscover the wines, too.