The Cantina dei Barbi, with its 300 wooden wine barrels and thousands of bottles of Brunello laid down for aging, has been open to the public for more than fifty years. During this time more than a million and a half wine lovers have visited our cellars, admiring the collection of bottles that date from 1870 to the present day, bearing witness to a continuity that makes Barbi unique in Italy.The Brunello produced by Fattoria dei Barbi has won prizes all over Europe since the late nineteenth century, and still today commands a presence as a landed wine all over the world.The Fattoria has always been a careful custodian of tradition, but also attentive to innovation and a pioneer in every sphere of winemaking. It was the first firm in Montalcino to export bottled wine to France (1817), the first to sell Brunello by mail order (1832), the first to export it to America (1962), England (1969) and Japan (1975). It created the first “Super Tuscan” (Brusco dei Barbi, 1969) and the first single-varietal grappa (Grappa di Bruennlo, 1974). In the 1960s the estate was a pioneer in using organic fertilisers, in the 1990s it created the first “artificial nose” for analysing wine, and in 2000 was one of the first to use carbon dioxide for cold fermentation of red wines.The current annual production is about 800,000 bottles, of which more than 200,000 are Brunello. The 66 hectares of the farm have an average density of about 5,000 vines and produce on the average less than 1.5 kg of grapes per vine; thus each vine produces only a little more than one bottle of wine. The philosophy of the Colombini family and the Fattoria dei Barbi has always been to know and study the most innovative technology and then wed it to the best tradition, so as to improve everything we produce without ever changing its distinguishing characteristics.
