Estate

The roads in Montauto are ancient, they run through and lead to places far removed from the flow of traffic. Here, Tuscany is united with upper Lazio by Etruscan memory and nature. On one side is Vulci, on the other Manciano, Saturnia and Pitigliano. But although they are close, the towns are a different reality, somehow displaced.

Sometimes you can leave without abandoning. Riccardo Lepri graduated in economics and went far away from the country. Distance can serve to understand the value of detachment and then, sometimes, one returns, stronger and more convinced, more in love.

Riccardo came home, overnight. He went to his grandfather and told him that he would like to take over the family business. His grandfather did not trust him. He wanted to check his motivation and put him through a year-long apprenticeship that looked much more like barracks martial training: wake up at 6 a.m. and work hard until sunset. Marching and marching, learning and learning. A year in which there was no shortage of fights and rants between grandfather and grandson who, day after day, realised they were very much alike even though they would never admit it.

A year in which Riccardo became master of the material even before he became master of the land and discovered the great emotion of making wine, of becoming part of a ritual that has been repeated since the birth of human culture. Along the road traced by his grandfather, in the midst of the largest vineyards of the lower Maremma, a new generation of winegrowers was thus formed.

Thus, in 2002, the first vintage signed by Riccardo came out, proving that grape varieties such as Sauvignon could also be, made in Maremma. It was not a sacrilege or a miracle: it was a reality.

The company's coat of arms, the hare, is an extension of the surname of Riccardo Lepri, who today embodies the company's future. The gold of its mantle, the vocation of an area traditionally considered red towards white grape varieties, Sauvignon in the first row. But it is also the speed of thought and action of this dynamic yet very traditional company that Lepri wants to represent.

The grandfather-colonel, in the mute pride of someone who is happy that his work is being perpetrated by his family, held framed a newspaper article recounting his grandson's success in the world of wine. The grandson, cursing that he has chosen this path full of hard work, is at the same time convinced that this is the best thing he has ever done.