Atop the Tuscany hills, Mania Castelli has a host of enterprises to tend to: hotel, winery, olive oil production, tastings and sales, and a restaurant-plus barnyard animals near and dear to her veterinarian heart.
When I first met her early in the morning her during my stay at La Torre Tolfe, she was jogging and at the end of the long day working on farm projects, she was out to tend to a sick sheep. She’s involved in every aspect of this beautiful Tuscany estate located just 3 kilometers from Siena.
Today using regenerative methods to replenish the soil, she and her husband Mark have built up a solid business in agritourism, boosting crops for excellent wine, olive oil and a wonderful restaurant using the fruits of their labor.
It started eight years ago when Mania, a practicing veterinarian, and her husband Mark, a marine biologist, moved from England to take over the family business. Her grandfather Luigi Castelli had made a fortune in the steel operations. He and his wife Lunella bought the place in 1953 as a holiday getaway. There was an ancient wine operation, dating back to the 1316, along with an olive grove and vineyard. Mania remembers the beauty of the landscape and the great times coming here as a child and making home movies of children’s stories with family members.
When Mark and Mania surveyed the farm for its possibilities for relocation, they were disturbed by the damages of erosion, not the beautiful landscape that defines the property today. ”We didn’t find it very beautiful,” recalls Mania, who co-owns it today with her brother.
At the beginning, resolving to make the farm work, Mania threw herself into turning the 17-bedroom house into a hotel. The house had been housing workers in the sharecropping system predominant in Italy then. She asked the workers on the original staff to stay on to work in the restaurant and hotel. “ I told them, ‘Let’s share this with other people.’” She herself took on duties as a waitress and concierge, learning on the job. “It was very much, ‘Let’s try this.’”
They hired Giacomo Mastretta, an excellent winemaker who valued their approach to making organic wine.
They found a chef who valued their organic approach to develop some new takes on traditional
Tuscan dishes. In this multi-pronged effort, every piece, from the wine-making to the restaurant, all worked together.
“Then the restaurant became very important,” she continues. “It’s a place to showcase the wine. Wine is a very sexy product and can bring people in.”
For Mania and Mark, the turnaround to organic farm producing olives and grapes and tourist haven has come with a lot of sweat and toil and experimentation. Using regenerative methods is a key part of their philosophy.
As to what precisely that means, Mania gives a long answer. “It has to translate into something financially viable and that is carbon. It means a whole bundle of practices added together that reduce the cost and damage done to the earth by farming.
Given the current drought in Italy, Mania expresses urgency about the need to adopt more regenerative methods of farming due to the specter of climate change, which is wreaking havoc on Italian farms with increasing heat and lessening precipitation. They work with other farmers in a group, backed by the government of Italy, to encourage the adoption of more regenerative farming methods. Taking a scientific approach, they are measuring everything from output to number of insects.
Last year there was rain every afternoon for three months. That has led to a loss of 30 percent every four years, according to Mark.
Now there is the drought which has hit southern Italy worst. This year, 2024, is the worst year for rainfall in more than 20 years. In Sicily and Puglia, drought threatens tourism. Each tourist uses 4 times the amount of the average resident.
On the day I met her, Mania was strategizing with her colleague, Austrian native Sascha Osterle, to develop more regenerative methods that would increase biodiversity on the farm. Among their ideas: grow sunflowers and use the oil to fuel the farm machinery: reduce the use of copper, commonly used to treat grapes during drought; turn arable land presently filled with wildflowers into pasture for grazing animals that would provide fertilizer for the soil.
Soon Mania will split the property with her brother, who shares her convictions about regenerative farming and the need to diversify.
Already they have adopted some changes in their effort to be more environmentally conscious. Mania points to a new method for pruning olive trees, changed from clipping branches all over the tree to leaving just one branch in the middle of the tree in order to conserve and direct growth.
She is as excited about promoting the olive oil from La Torre Alle Tolfe as much as about the wine. She conducts olive oil tastings similar to wine tastings. From a tray of 20 different bottles of olive oil, Mania selects one to try. She smells it, observes the bottle, then takes a sip. They grow five varieties of olives—out of 200 in Italy– on the farm. Each one tastes different. To inform consumers, they have created a booklet on frequently asked questions about olive oil.
The approach to the 13-hectare vineyard is similar: minimal intervention and no water to grow the grapes and allow their true identity to come through. “We wyere interested in bringing in more sustainability. We started to use less sulfites. The wine is more alive!”
Located in the Chianti Colli Senesi district, their certified Chianti is made according to the strict rules governing Chianti, composed of 80 percent Sangiovese grapes, aged in concrete lined with glass. Besides two Chianti, they make a refreshing Rose and two others using different combinations of grapes.
The delicious wine is not too expensive; chianti costs 15.5 euros at the shop; the more full complex Chianti Reserve goes for 25 euros. The Chianti Coli Sense was praised as “rich and fruity, all held together with dusty tannins,” in a great review from the NY Times.
At the wine-tasting earlier in the shop, the rose was so refreshing but I really liked the full-bodied Chianti. I had never really had decent chianti until this glass– dark red, tasting slightly of the earth and sandy soil, which is rich in fossilsThis was earthy and smooth and All-natural. Cheers!
