At Tenuta Montauto we are definitely lucky.

There is nothing around us: just the silence as far as the eye can see of the thick Maremma woods, the wind, hares and hawks. No factories, no built-up areas, no neighbours, no roads other than the provincial, and very little travelled, road to Campigliola.

Given that, in nature, nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, the limits of organic farming strike us in all their most brutal clarity when we see certified organic farms that are forced to coexist - often even in situations of obvious proximity - with others that have not espoused the same ethics. Still others, despite themselves, reside near highly industrialised cities or roads with such high traffic flow that they raise doubts about the legitimacy of the term itself, which thus inevitably ends up being discredited.

Well, at km 10 of the Campigliola, in this boundless expanse of woods that stretch down to the sea, we enjoy an isolation that we do not hesitate to call, in a word, privileged.

An isolation that allows us to make our choices without compromise, in total freedom, and an absoluteness that comes from being unhinged, disengaged from the world, and those who have been here will certainly confirm this.

No constraints, in short, other than those, exquisitely moral ones, that we have in the first place towards ourselves.

In this sense, our behavioural decalogue starts from a first, unavoidable rule: at Tenuta Montauto we drink the wine we produce. That is why the first form of respect we contemplate is that towards us who are not only the producers, but also the first consumers of our products.

In addition to the isolation, we are also fortunate for the providential sea air that always blows in from the west. It is a sea that you cannot see, our sea, but you can sense it in the wind that blows from Capalbio, which is only 10 km from here as the crow flies. A providential wind, as we said, because it dries our vines, sanitising them from humidity and warding off the risk of diseases such as powdery mildew or downy mildew, against which we protect ourselves with targeted treatments, only if necessary, and always in line with the phytopharmacological tradition of present and past Italian viticulture: sulphur and, more sporadically, copper.

Of course, we always try to limit the use of copper, which, being a heavy metal, can affect the wholesomeness of the final product. This is why, at Tenuta Montauto, we wash our grapes before vinification and filter the wine in order to bring a healthy and wholesome product into the bottle, of which goodness is but an inevitable consequence.

We are also extremely strict with regard to sulphur dioxide: the imperative of clean grapes allows us, in this sense, to use it within the limits imposed by organic certification and, in any case, where possible, even less.

Our wines are, in this sense, clean wines because they are the result of a wine-growing practice that is the fruit of an 'ecology of thought', i.e. an ethic that embraces the entire supply chain, from the land to the bottled product and which, even in terms of distribution, has its own precise deontology. In fact, we have chosen to use only energy from renewable sources throughout the production process.

At Tenuta Montauto we have always been this way, and we will always be this way because for us 'organic' is not a brand, nor a fashion, but a way of life, an ethic that coincides with the certainty of acting in a way that is completely consistent first and foremost with ourselves: our wine, in fact, is ecological not only from an environmental point of view, but also from a managerial one, as we have espoused a policy of small steps that can give life to a healthy company, a matrix of wines that, like it, are just as concrete, healthy and wholesome.

This of course entails choices that might seem counter-productive, such as not distributing to the large-scale retail trade (GDO), the reasons for which we will elaborate on later.

All this, for us, is encapsulated in the term organic, which we decline even more profoundly, because it is ethical, and we apply it to all the cogs in this story, in this world away from the world that is Tenuta Montauto's micro-universe.

About Bio: a necessary premise

Bio , today, is a much abused concept.

Bio, biologico or organic are completely synonymous terms and indicate nothing more than 'a reference to biology or living beings', as recalled by Treccani as well as most contemporary Italian dictionaries.

The term, however, has undergone a veritable process of politicisation that has led it to broaden its connotations, which, over time, have come to be oriented towards the ethical axis of the 'good', opposing anything 'non-biological', which, by extension, has come to designate something 'non-natural', 'non-beneficial'.

These kinds of oppositions, however, relate to an eminently semantic world and rather rarely, to be fair, reflect the qualitative reality of the facts.

In agriculture, for example, although the term 'bio' has acclimatised itself splendidly from a commercial point of view and has become, to all intents and purposes, a brand associated with its own production specifications, it is the concept of quality that has been strongly challenged by this contemporaneity, to the point that it no longer finds any real correspondence in the 'bio' label.

As we said, 'bio' has become, over time, a brand name and, as such, is affected by the logic of its market. Although the majority of consumers, both Italian and foreign, do not disdain spending even a few euros more for the 'organic' brand, more and more consumers are disappointed by this policy.

After all, are we really so sure that, today, this brand still represents a guarantee?

Besides referring to 'organic', in fact, the qualitative distinction should be linked to the personal ethics of the producer who is the only guarantor, responsible and depositary of the finished product.

But not only that, because in addition to these elements there is also the environmental factor, that is, the non-arbitrary, often random element that indirectly decides our ethics.

It is the place where one is born and where one grows up.
Here, Tenuta Montauto is, in this sense, a place that is more than 'organic': it is Nature, simple and powerful: come and see it for yourself.