You Had Me At Anfiteatro

Picture this: scrawny mid-twenties Italian kid, earning his first real regular salary, out trying to figure out what it means to eat and drink well. That was me, probably around 2002-2003. Someone (I genuinely cannot remember who) told me I had to go to have dinner at Da Burde.

Trattoria Da Burde sits in the outskirts of Florence, the kind of place that doesn't need to advertise itself because the people who know, know. The menu is Florentine in the truest sense: unfussy, seasonal, and completely honest; everything is locally sourced, and the restaurant opens primarily for lunch, and does dinner maybe twice a week.
Among other things, we naturally had bistecca Fiorentina, and I remember asking the sommelier for advice on what to drink (I wanted to impress my mother and some family friends). He suggested a bottle I had never heard of.

Anfiteatro. Vecchie Terre di Montefili.

I don't remember the vintage – I didn’t even know what vintage meant when choosing wine – but I do remember that the wine felt amazing, which is saying something for a twenty-odd-year-old who simply wanted to look cool. I do not think I had the palate, the understanding, nor the language to process the wine or express how it felt. But I had zero doubt that this was what quality should taste like.

That was probably twenty years ago. And this wine, along with its producer, has stayed with me ever since.

When we started TerraVino, one thing was clear to me: if you want to bring Chianti to Singapore and cut through the noise and big labels, there’s only one way to do it: Montefili.
And to be honest, it felt less like a business decision and more like something that was waiting to happen for two decades.

A Passion Built Into the Hillside

Though administered under the municipality of Greve in Chianti, Vecchie Terre di Montefili sits across two of Chianti Classico's most prized UGAs: Panzano, which anchors most of the estate, and Montefioralle, which claims its highest plots. If you read our previous piece on Chianti Classico, you'll know that Panzano occupies a distinctive position within the appellation: higher altitude, cooler nights, soils that push Sangiovese toward precision rather than power.
It's a place where the grape tends to produce wines of tension and finesse rather than sheer weight.

The winery was founded by Roberto Acuti, and since the beginning it was shaped by something that doesn't always define wineries of this calibre: genuine personal love for the land.

And as any passion project, this was not a calculated investment, built with the kind of devotion that only makes sense if you accept that there will be hurdles, and that patience is a necessary skill to master.
Roberto cared deeply about every detail of the estate, from the vineyard itself to the identity of the wines. Thanks to his relentless focus, over the years Montefili became one of the most emblematic small producers in Chianti Classico; never through volume or aggressive marketing, but through consistency, precision, and the desire to not compromise on what the terroir was capable of expressing.

The winery earned a significant reputation among those who follow Chianti Classico seriously. Critics noticed. Collectors followed. Some young kid from Florence became a lifelong fan. But most importantly, Montefili was consistently mentioned alongside a very small group of producers who had helped define what the appellation could be at its most expressive.

Then, as it often happens, life threw a pretty bad curveball: Roberto faced serious health challenges that affected both him and the family profoundly. The weight of running an estate of this character, with this kind of commitment to quality, became harder to sustain. A chapter that had been built with such intention and care reached a turning point.
And the winery was basically mothballed.

New Hands, Same Soul

In 2015, ownership of Montefili passed to three friends based in New York: one Italian, two Americans. It's the kind of transition that, on paper, can go either way. A beloved niche estate changes hands; the worst version of that story writes itself.

Thankfully, this was not that story.

The new owners came in with a clear disposition: they had not acquired a brand to reshape it according to their preferences, but a living project to continue and deepen. Their approach has been marked by the same deliberate, detail-oriented thinking that defined the Roberto Acuti era, with the added advantage of fresh perspective and substantial resources that allowed them to invest more directly in quality.

They also brought in a different visual language, with the branding updated to feel more contemporary, cleaner, and more international in its confidence. Not a departure from what Montefili had been, but a more articulate way of expressing it to a wider audience. It's a distinction that matters: updating the presentation without altering the substance.

Fun-fact (one that I find genuinely amusing): at some point during this period of renewed visibility, a bottle of Montefili Chianti Classico made its way onto the big screen, appearing in the 2023 film No Hard Feelings with Jennifer Lawrence. My wife and I had just gotten back from a visit to the estate; she watched the movie on Netflix, and sent me a photo as soon as she noticed the bottle on screen.

Before you assume this was a calculated brand placement, it wasn't. The story goes that a stagehand simply handed over whichever bottle was nearby when the scene needed one. Pure coincidence.
Still, I like to think the wine earned its moment.

Three Soils, One Estate

So what makes Montefili so unique? It is the nature of its terroir.
And it is precisely here, in the land itself, that you understand what Roberto Acuti saw when he chose this hillside: a rare geological opportunity.

The estate is small (with 12.5 hectares in total, 11 of which planted to Sangiovese), and sits at altitude, between 480 and 540 meters above sea level. That elevation alone gives the wines a freshness and aromatic lift that lower-lying vineyards in the appellation often struggle to match. But what truly sets Montefili apart is that within this compact estate, three distinct tongues of soil converge, each with its own character and its own conversation to have with the vine.

There is galestro, a clay-based, crumbly stone that drains freely and pushes roots to work for their nutrients. There is alberese, limestone-dominant and more compact, which gives the wine a vertical quality, making it fresh and precise, with a fine tannic structure that rewards patience. And there is pietraforte, the rockiest and most compact of the three, which produces Sangiovese of greater richness and roundness, wines that feel more generous without ever losing their identity.

This coexistence of three distinct soil types within a single compact estate is, when you think about it, both a gift and a challenge. The land is capable of multiple voices. But soil, on its own, doesn't speak, it needs someone to listen, to interpret, and to translate what it's offering into something we can taste. That is, ultimately, the job of the winemaker.

The Interpreter

Serena Gusmeri joined Montefili in 2015, alongside the new ownership, and has been the continuity between the estate's founding philosophy and its current direction ever since. What defines her approach is a combination of scientific focus and deliberate restraint. Since 2018, the estate has run formal biodiversity research (to the point where they track wildflowers, insects, and micro-elements in the soil year after year) not for certification, but for understanding. The vineyard, for Serena, is where quality is made or lost, while the winery is ultimately the last step.

When it comes to harvest, decisions are deliberate and reflect the same approach. She begins sampling every parcel of Sangiovese a full month before picking, returning weekly, reading acidity and alcohol, but also texture and seed maturity. She told me during an interview that she likes to bite into the seeds, looking for a woody brown crunch; green means unripe tannins, which translates into a wine that pulls rather than gives. It is a small (fascinating) detail, but it speaks to how she makes every decision at Montefili attentively, and never on autopilot.

An estate this small also cannot produce many bottles: they have around 35k-38k bottles a year across their whole range, with the top references limited to 2-3k only. If a parcel doesn't meet the standard, that label doesn't go to market. Full stop. For a producer this size, that discipline is not a marketing line, rather a genuine sacrifice, and one that defines the quality of everything that does make it into the bottle.

The Wines

Anfiteatro

This is the wine the sommelier at Da Burde placed in front of me two decades ago. Anfiteatro is the oldest vineyard on the estate, planted in 1975, and Serena refers to it simply as "the Queen"; everything at Montefili revolves around its story. The name refers to the natural amphitheater shape of the hillside parcel, an area that captures warmth, manages airflow, and creates a microclimate of unusual consistency.

The wine is built on old vines, high altitude, and very little intervention. Dark fruit, earthy depth, firm tannins that soften with time, and an acidity that keeps everything in check. Also, it doesn't show you everything at once; open it young, and it's impressive but closed. Give it a few years, and it becomes a different conversation entirely. Not a wine for a Tuesday night, but absolutely worth the occasion.

Vinea Vecchia

Planted in 1981, Vinea Vecchia is the estate's second old-vine parcel. With age comes a natural reduction in yield, but what is lost in quantity is more than recovered in depth. The result is a wine of precision and aromatic lift: dark cherry, dried herbs, a savory mineral quality. Old vines don't give you much, but what they give is a step up in concentration and character that younger vines rarely achieve.

Vinea Nel Bosco

This is Serena's newest experiment and, by her own admission, one she is particularly fond of (and an incredible surprise for me when I first tried it last year). Vinea nel Bosco sits at 540 meters, the highest point of the estate, bordered by dense woodland that creates its own microclimate, with noticeably cooler nights that slow ripening and preserve acidity. The soil here is predominantly alberese, limestone-rich and compact, which gives the wine a vertical quality: fresh, precise, gentle tannins and a long finish that surprises you.

Serena describes a thread that runs through all of Montefili's wines, what she calls the fil rouge of freshness. It is the common language of the estate, even as each parcel speaks in a different voice. Vinea nel Bosco, from the highest point and the most limestone-driven soil, expresses that freshness most directly.

Twenty Years Later

It is honestly incredible for me that a wine I encountered in my twenties, at a trattoria on the outskirts of Florence, is now part of what TerraVino brings to Singapore.

I have watched Montefili across two ownerships, across the change from Roberto Acuti's founding vision to the current chapter under Serena's careful direction. The winery has evolved, as all living things do (and must?). But it has never lost what made it matter in the first place: a refusal to produce wines that are easy rather than honest, a commitment to Sangiovese that borders on devotion, and a terroir that has something genuinely distinct to say.

Being the ones who import these bottles into Singapore is not something we take lightly. If anything, it feels like a responsibility to tell their story properly, to find the right tables for these wines, and to ensure that the people who open a bottle of Montefili here have some sense of what they are holding.

Every so often, an experience changes your relationship with wine.
Montefili did that for me, and I sincerely hope it does the same for you.