http://www.roccadifrassinello.it/eng/introFrassinello.html

The big Rocca di Frassinello project came into being not from a great but from a small idea. A small idea because connected to the develop of Castellare, but a big project when happened the arrival of Domain Baron De Rothschild-Lafite, making the first join venture between an italian and french producer. Like other Chianti estates Castellare di Castellina, which has belonged to Paolo Panerai for almost 30 years, at the end of the 90’s had to take account of the fact that in the Chianti Classico zone it had become very hard, almost impossible, to expand: there was a lack of high quality land and there were planning complications which required building permission even to plant a vineyard.The traditional and natural outlet of Siena, and therefore Chianti Classico, has always been the Maremma. So for some years there had been a kind of pasture-change from the Chianti hills towards the sea, to that land which had once been malaria country before the reclamation begun by the Grand Duke Leopoldo of Tuscany. But the Maremma, as well as being bitter (in the past) is also great and has a long established winegrowing tradition in the north (Bolgheri and environs) and in the south, opposite the Argentario, with the narrow territory of Morellino di Scansano. Almost all the Chianti people had gone there, to the north and preferably to the south. Castellare’s choice was not to go for the obvious and already well known but to find out whether the rest of the Maremma had equally or more suitable soils than those of Bolgheri and Scansano. Yes, they existed and were discovered by Ezio Rivella, fresh from his extraordinary experiences at Villa Banfi in Montalcino, and Gianni Zonin who, with his new Gianni Zonin Vineyards, has brought together one of the finest collections of top level estates in Italy and the USA. Rivella and Zonin discovered that right in the centre of the Maremma, between Bolgheri and Scansano, there is a kind geological foot which has the same characteristics as the soils of Chianti and Montalcino, of which in fact this foot is a sort of continuation towards the sea. Meaning soils like those of Tuscany’s two most famous winegrowing zones, but with a substantial difference: an average temperature that is 4-5 and even 6 °C higher, so the grapes ripen even three-four weeks before those of Chianti and Montalcino. This land blessed by God lies in the municipalities of Gavorrano and Ribolla and is part of a young DOC area with a difficult and not well known name, Monteregio di Massa Marittima, which however has a far greater extension and to some degree includes all the metalliferous hills. Rather than the almost flatlands chosen by Rivella and Zonin, Paolo Panerai decisively went for the hills formed at the two sides of the old Aurelia....