INTERVIEW WITH GIACOMO TACHIS

’FOUNDING FATHER’

Giacomo Tachis, known to all as the ‘father of supertuscan wines’, the man behind illustrious labels such as Sassicaia, Tignanello and Solaia, modestly shies away from such titles. Sitting behind a pile of ancient manuscripts stacked high on his desk, he meets my questions with an amiable smile and a twinkle in his eye.

“To think that when I was recruited by Nicolò Antinori, Piero’s father, back in 1961 my interest was in spirits more than in wine. My true passion lies in alchemy and distillation,” says Tachis opening a parenthesis to his first employment, working in a large distillery in Bologna.

Over the thirty years of employment with Antinori, Tachis took the production from 900,000 to 14 million bottles. By 1965 he had moved up from cellar master to management, overseeing all stages of production. That same year Piero Antinori entered his father’s business and working beside Tachis they doubled Antinori’s cellar capacity.

Tachis was not after quantity. He wanted to adapt his alchemy to blending and creating super-wines. By the end of the 60s, Tachis was blending Tenuta San Guido’s first batch of Sassicaia, vintage 1968. The Bolgheri estate property, San Guido, which belonged to Antinori’s cousin, Mario Incisa, was later taken over by his son Nicolò Incisa, one of Tachis’ closest friends. “I selected the best barrels of 1965, 1966, 1967 and the current 1968 vintages of Cabernet Sauvignon, which were blended to produce about 6,000 bottles of the first Sassicaia vintage 68,” recalls Tachis. That year Sassicaia set the benchmark to Tuscany’s great wines.

“These were exciting times. I would often travel to Bordeaux and spend time with Emil Peynaud, lecturer at Bordeaux University,” says Tachis, “he taught me the art of blending international varieties.” In the early 70’s Peynaud started consulting for Antinori, spending a few days every couple of years in Tuscany, working with Tachis.

With the arrival of the first barriques at the end of the 60s many of the then top Italian wimemakers scorned Antinori’s initiative, commenting that the wines were too oaky. “Absolute nonsense, we wanted the wine to evolve in the best way possible. Besides it’s not the barrique which makes a good wine, good wine comes from good grapes,” exalts Tachis. “Today, thirty years later, every magazine is full of photographs of winemakers sitting astride flights of barriques.” While on the subject of wine vessels, Tachis today favours a return to cement vats rather than steel containers. “Red wines especially do better in small-sized cylindrical cement vats and even better if they are buried in the ground,” says Tachis “Wine like man needs to feel the warmth of a house with solid walls.”

Since retiring in 1992 Tachis has had many offers of consultancy but has been selective in choosing those areas he is most passionate about – Sicily, Sardinia and the southern islands. When he is not delving into the many box files that surround his study, researching some ancient document, or reviewing new winemaking technologies he spends his time down South. Among his southern achievements he has been responsible for Donnafugata’s Milleunanotte and Tancredi labels, Abazia Sant’Anastasia’s Litra and since 1998 he has an ongoing consultancy with Corvo di Salaparuta, Sicily’s largest winery. In 2001 when Corvo was sold to Illva di Saronno its annual production leveled some 830,000 cases of wine. In Central Italy’s Marches region, Tachis consulted eight years for the Umani Ronchi winery, from 1992 to 2001, in which time he created their ‘supermarche’ ‘Pelago’ label.

In additon to Sicily, Tachis consutls for the Sardinian winery Argiolas and the large quality driven co-operative Santadi. “I’m absolutely passionate about Vermentino,” says Tachis “there are still parts of Sardinia which I consider virgin land, it’s a spectacular island, especially the south, which is the true soul of the island.”

Italy has a great wealth of grape varieties and in addition to his passion for Vermentino, Tachis is a keen promoter of Sardinia’s Carrignano variety; Nero D’Avola, Inzolia , Grillo and Cataratto from Sicily; Lambrusco from Reggio Emilia; Barbera and Nebbiolo from Piemonte and ‘good’ Tuscan Sangiovese. The varieties he does not favour are high yielding ones, which lack structure and personality. As for the future he looks to Sicily and Sardenia.

And what about all the‘super’ Italian regional IGTs which are being produced with international varieties? Is it a marketing tool aimed at an international market? Having spent most of his career blending wines, it goes without saying that Merlot, Cabernet and Shiraz are also important complementary varieties used for blending and for perfecting and adding at times giving tone and structure to territorial wines, without overriding their original character.

Tachis defends the importance of the supertuscans, “They opened the door to a new market as well as the road to a better quality wine, at a time when, especially in Tuscany, Chianti was a weak and cheap wine.” In a flurry of passion he concedes that Cabernet plantings in Chianti and Bolgheri are more privileged than those grown in Bordeaux, giving even better results due to the ideal Tuscan terroir. However, today, almost all producers have planted areas with complementary international vines and this has added to the standardization of wines – an issue, which deeply concerns him.

Worse still, Tachis cracks down on the mass production of today’s wines, many of which, through being chemically treated, suffer from a loss of personality and character. According to Tachis, winemakers are partly to blame for this, as well as being guilty of leaving their thumbprint on a range of wines from different estates. Tachis believes that a winemaker working for several estates must take care not to repeat a pattern of similar blends, methods of vinification and similar evolution techniques for the wines. “Its up to the sensitivity of palate and skill of the enologist to interpret the character of each individual wine and adapt it best to the traditions and culture of its area of production.”

Looking at Italian wines as part of a global market, Tachis believes Italy still has a long way to go, yet the sheer diversity from region to region is a great market potential. New World wines are competitively priced yet too technological for Tachis’ palate, which searches out the authenticity of the wine. Tachis blames the press for being all too eager to chase after a trend, without fully understanding the culture of wine.

“Italy has great winemakers,” says Tachis, but he refuses to comment on anyone in particular, neither will he be persuaded to comment on his favorite wines, though he later lets slip his admiration for French winemakers such as Paul Pontallier of Chateau Margaux and Charles Chevalier of Chateau Lafite. The very thought of the high-flying winemaker consultant makes him laugh. “They’re always in a hurry dashing from one place to the next, preoccupied with achieving too much in too short a time,” Tachis doesn’t care for the ‘prima donna’ winemaker syndrome. But on the subject of donne (women) his eyes light up, “women enologists have a much finer palate than men, but more to the point, it’s the agronomist who deserves to be in the limelight.”

Tachis underlines that the main failing of Italian winemaking is the haste which producers and winemakers have to achieve all too quickly. According to Tachis, experience comes with time its not just a matter of intuition or marketing. One needs years of experience, time to experiment and to follow through the evolution of a wine. “Winemakers, like wines, need to go through a malolactic fermentation before they are ready,’ says Tachis.

Looking to the future of winemaking Tachis voices a need to return to nature. He is not a fervent believer in biodynamics, but has always sustained that great wines should not be refrigerated, filtered or clarified. “I bottled my Tignanellos, Solaias and Sassicaias, as they were, adding only a small amount of sulphur dioxide to prevent the wines from oxidizing.” Tachis believes that the study of science is necessary and can lead to great discoveries and achievements, even when these results are often contested.

The final impression is not of a guru imparting wisdom to lesser mortals. I left with the image of a man of charm, wit and understanding. The father of great Italian wines is a man of simple tastes, even in the modesty of the wines he himself would choose to drink.

A final word of advice from Tachis: not to forget that wine must reflect its origins and terroir as a whole, that is its physiological characteristics such as climate, terrain, light, as well as the cultural aspects related to man and his traditions.


INFO BOX

BORN: Torino, 1933
STATUS: Married in 1965 to Maria Vadini have one daughter, Ilaria, born in 1970
EDUCATION: enological studies at Alba, Piedmont
POSITIONS: Production manager for Marchesi Antinori from 1961- 1992
Consultant enologist: Argiano, Tenuta San Guido, Castello di Rampolla, Querciabella, Umani Ronchi, Abazia Sant’ Anastasia, Donnafugata, Corvo di Salaparuta, Argiolas, Santadi
ACHIEVEMETNS: Sassicaia, Tognanello, Solaia and Solengo – Italy’s top wines