La Ginestra’s history is a utopian dream: In 1978 a group of young Tuscans began to restore an abandoned farm 20km south of Florence. They first produced grains and goats milk and cheese. In 1986 new members of the co-op introduced bees and olive trees and the first vines were planted in the ‘90s. Certified organic in 1989, they went on to introduce indigenous yeasts and a low intervention approach to wine-making in 2012. 

 

Or as they like to put it, “we choose with love and passion to be observers accompanying the grapes in their natural transformation into wine”.

 

Rounding out the Italo-Australi exchange, winemaker Dario Nocci has done prior stints down under with Gilles Lapalus at Sutton Grange and Erinn Klein at Ngeringa.