Photos By:: Adil Arora
 Born and raised in Tuscany, the premium wine region of Italy, Marco is quick to admit he is not from a wine family-neither did he grow up breathing wines like many of his compatriots. He worked for years and made his family garment company a successful jeans manufacturing outfit.
Like many successful business people before him in Italy and elsewhere, he bought Castello di Bossi in 1983, primarily as a real estate proposition. But he soon caught the bug and started making his own wine in the estate in 1985. Corbaia was his first wine- a Super Tuscan with 70% Sangiovese and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon. While he kept on looking after the fashion business and extensive travels, he also started replanting and upgrading the quality of his wines.
Ten years later Marco finally decided to get full time into wine business and also started looking for new properties to fulfill his desire to own three wineries in the best Tuscan locations. Renieri was the second winery he bought in 1998 –again replanting from scratch and going for the modern heavy-density 6200 vines per hA plants, yielding only 1 kg of grape per vine.
Like a majority of successful Tuscan producers who are ambitious enough to expand, buying his third property in 2000 in Maremma where the Sangiovese based Morrelino di Scansano was getting known and the land was still affordable, was a logical choice.
Between the three vineyards, Marco owns 200hAs of vines. He believes in sustainability and produces grapes organically with no use of herbicides, pesticides or even irrigation. He likes to keep raising the bar for his wine quality.
‘I came to India about 2 years ago when we had tasted my wines at a restaurant with you (Qba- I believe). That was the first trip to assess the market. I am happy to work with Aspri who are already dealing with premium Italian wines and understand the quality we are offering,’ he says.
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| Wines of Renieri tasted at the Park Hotel |
Besides Corbaia and the basic Chianti Classico, Marco also produces a Riserva- Berardo and an IGT 100% Merlot called Girolamo. Besides Brunello and Rosso di Montalcino, he also makes IGT variants- a Bordeaux type ‘Re di Renieri’ with Cabernet, Merlot and Petit Verdot , ‘Regina di Renieri’ with100% Syrah and a blend of Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet he calls Invetro, again an IGT Toscana label.
Marco is very happy about his 2009 harvest, which he considers a 5-star vintage from all his three properties. His wines have been getting rave reviews and ratings from both Wine Spectator and Robert Parker with the 2004 (perhaps the best vintage so far during this decade for Brunello di Montalcino) Brunello even getting a Gold Medal at Decanter Awards. His passion for wines shows in quality and there are people willing to pay for the high quality in countries he is exporting to.
Hopefully, the 5-star hotels in India will find his wines palatable for their clients’ pockets- the high scores of 93-96 for many of his labels will certainly help with the Indian & B personnel- like they do everywhere else in the world.
Subhash Arora |