Visit Tenuta Licinia: A Boutique Tuscan Winery

26.02.2024 - 16:25 / forbes.com

Tenuta Licinia is a small boutique wine producer in Lucignano (Tuscany) that offers tastings and personalized tours of its vineyards and garden.

At the winery, a pioneering young winemaker has taken on the heroic task of recovering and re-establishing a historic vineyard.

His contemporary approach to winemaking—based partly on geology—focuses on the critical interaction between subsoils and vines in producing high-quality wines.

Lucignano, a walled medieval village, is one of those small towns in Italy that are too easily missed. Tenuta Licinia is about three miles from Lucignano.

Tucked in the province of Arezzo in Tuscany, Lucignano is about a one-hour drive from Florence, 45 minutes from Siena, and a half hour from the city of Arezzo.

Known as the “Pearl of Valdichiana” (Chiana Valley), the town is rich in history and culture and has been designated as one of the I Borghi più belli d’Italia (the Most Beautiful Borghi of Italy).

Lucignano is located on a hilltop close to the border between Siena and Arezzo and offers one of the best examples of medieval town planning with maze-like concentric ring roads that have survived relatively intact over centuries.

The interior circle houses the main square, the Church of San Francisco, the Collegiate Church of San Michele Arcangelo, and Palazzo Commale, a building with both municipal offices and Museo Comunale, a civic museum.

The area is known for its high-quality extra virgin olive oil, Chianina meat, Cinta Sense cold cuts, homemade pici pasta–and white, Rosato, red, sparkling, and dessert wines. Meals at local restaurants are simple, using many of the same high-quality ingredients and traditional preparations that have been used here for centuries.

Several processions and festivals occur in Lucignano throughout the year. The Maggiorata, on the last two Sundays of May, is the one best known, consisting of a parade of allegorical floats and the participation of most people in the town.

Tenuta Licinia comprises 60 hectares of woods, 5.5 hectares of vineyards, and 3 hectares of olive groves that were planted in the 1970s by a Belgian lawyer, Jacques de Liederkerke, grandfather of the current winemaker, James Marshall-Lockyer.

A Tuscan friend introduced Jacques to an abandoned farmhouse with a small vineyard, which the latter decided to restore. But for various reasons, Jacques could never fully realize the potential of his land. That responsibility would fall years later to his grandson, who had been working on his doctorate in philosophy at Oxford University.

James Marshall-Lockyer considers himself a “self-taught winemaker with the help of good mentors.”

Moving to Italy, he brought with him a passion for the land and winemaking.“I was addicted to working