Franco Biondi Santi dies
Posted on 8 April 2013
Franco Biondi Santi has died. The Italian wine world is in mourning as it loses the staunchest defender of its millennial wine tradition. Biondi Santi, who was 91, was perhaps Italy’s more vivid link to its vinous past. Perhaps even more so than Giuseppe Quintarelli, another mourned hero.
After all, it was Franco’s grandfather Ferruccio who first made a clonal selection of Sangiovese Grosso, the local strain of Sangiovese still known as BBS/11, in the 1870s thus starting the history of Brunello di Montalcino, one of Italy’s two most prestigious wines. Since that time, there have only two changes of directorship at this legendary estate: first with Franco’s father Tancredi (to whom Franco never referred otherwise as ‘grande uomo’) and then in 1970, Franco himself.
Franco Biondi-Santi in February 2008. © S.
There will tributes pouring from the wine world today. On this sad occasion, my most vivid memories of Franco Biondi Santi are the little personal touches that showed him as a nobleman of a forgotten age. The Greppo estate is located 2km from Montalcino proper and it actually makes a nice downhill walk through vineyards and olive groves, reinforcing the sense of pilgrimage. Although he produced one of Italy’s most expensive wines, Franco Biondi Santi would never turn down a request for a visit and tasting, greeting his guests personally and showing the cellar with simplicity and directness before leading you to the tasting room where a personalised leaflet would await each guest. It was a golden standard to let guests taste all wines including the legendary, 400-€ Riserva.
As every year, I asked for a visit last February during the Benvenuto Brunello. The tasting was scheduled for a Friday afternoon. Schedule changes are something absolutely normal in this business and so there was no problem when Franco’s assistant called saying he was unwell and did we mind if he didn’t run the tasting personally. But then the great man himself wrote to me to apologise and kindly invite to his place in Siena in case we wished to speak in person. That, in a nutshell, was Franco Biondi Santi: aristocracy and amiability at the same time. He was been a vintner of renown but today, we are mourning the personage.