Some wine stories begin with an inheritance; others begin with a choice. Michele Satta’s belongs to the second kind.
Born in Varese, with Sardinian roots, Michele discovered the land as a boy in Sardinia — the real kind, made of hard work and daily dedication. He found it again in Tuscany during his years at the faculty of Agriculture in Pisa, and in the Seventies he arrived in Bolgheri. He decided to stay — not out of calculation, but out of love. He started as a farmhand on an estate in Castagneto Carducci, where peaches and strawberries were grown and the wine was still sold in bulk, and there he learned the lesson that would stay with him forever: rural culture is an immense heritage, to be protected with patience and respect.
In 1983 he founded his own winery. It was the same year the Bolgheri DOC was born, and Michele’s winery is one of the six that founded it — the only one, among the founding fathers, created by a technician, an agronomist. The first harvests were made with rented vineyards and a rented cellar; in 1984 came Costa di Giulia, the area’s first single-varietal Vermentino, and in 1987 his first vineyard of his own. In the early Nineties Michele bought all the land that still makes up the estate today, with one clear idea: to make wine only from his own grapes.
Those were the years when Bolgheri exploded. Michele saw its potential up close, including as resident agronomist at Ornellaia, yet he stayed true to his own path. In 1991 he planted Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sangiovese and Syrah for a red that would be more Mediterranean than Bordelais, more Italian than international: this was Piastraia, which in 1994 became the first wine in history to bear the name Bolgheri Rosso. Alongside the great Bordeaux varieties, Michele was among the pioneers of Sangiovese and Syrah on the coast — a Sangiovese of an elegance few believed possible so close to the sea, and a single-varietal Syrah that since 2005 has been one of the house signatures.
Today the estate counts twenty-five hectares in the heart of the DOC, all planted to its own grapes. Since 2019 it has been led by his children Giacomo and Benedetta, with a very young team — all under thirty-five — and vineyard management devoted to biodiversity and soil fertility, with biodynamic practices and autumn cover crops. In the cellar Giacomo has introduced concrete, amphorae and whole-cluster fermentation for Sangiovese and Syrah: innovation in the service of faithfulness to the land. On a yellow wall above the amphorae runs a verse by Rilke, about the things that pass away and trust us to save them.
The philosophy remains the one it began with: every wine should tell the character of the person who makes it and of the place where it is born. You can taste it in Costa di Giulia, in Cavaliere — a pure Sangiovese with a long maceration in concrete — in Piastraia, and in Marianova, the first wine of the second generation.
Michele Satta is the fourth stop on our journey among the friendly wineries of our coast, after Tenuta Meraviglia, Bulichella and Casadei. His wines are on our wine list and at the weekly tastings on the estate; and if you pass through Castagneto Carducci, the winery in Località Vigna al Cavaliere welcomes visitors for tours and tastings by reservation.
*Michele Satta, Castagneto Carducci (LI) — michelesatta.com*