Case Basse di Gianfranco Soldera
A cult Montalcino estate founded in 1972 by Gianfranco Soldera, producing tiny quantities of profound, long-lived 100% Sangiovese in a fiercely minimal-intervention style.
About Case
Case Basse di Gianfranco Soldera is among the most revered and rarest names in Italian wine. In 1972, Gianfranco Soldera, a former Milanese insurance broker, bought the run-down Case Basse property in southwestern Montalcino and replanted it to Sangiovese with the aim of producing exceptional Brunello. He embraced minimal-intervention methods well before they were fashionable, banning chemical fertilizers and relying on indigenous yeasts. By the 1990s his intensely aromatic, deeply concentrated wines had become benchmarks, commanding extraordinary prices and selling out on release. Production is kept deliberately tiny, around 15,000 bottles a year. After a dispute with the Brunello consortium, the estate has bottled its wine under the Toscana IGT designation rather than Brunello di Montalcino. Soldera died in 2019; the estate continues under his widow Graziella and children Monica and Mauro, preserving his exacting, uncompromising philosophy.
Flagship wines
- Case Basse Sangiovese (Toscana IGT)
- Intistieti
- Brunello di Montalcino Riserva (older vintages)
Editorial notes
Bottles are scarce and expensive; provenance matters given counterfeiting risk. Wines reward extended cellaring and decanting.