The History

Fattoria Santa Lucia, in the province of Pisa, has an extension of about 170 hectares in the central Tuscany backcountry – where for centuries the methodical work of man on nature has created the most peaceful landscapes in the world – where the Arno valley of Pisa ends and the one of Florence begins, on the first slopes of the hills separating the Arno river from Valdera, an area which for its position unobstructed by other elevations and only 20 km far from the sea as the crow flies, is included among the Tuscan coast wines. Our Farm is made up by the west part of the huge farm of San Gervasio – lately owed by the counts of Montauto, but in ancient times by the marquises Alemanni Uguccioni of Florence – by a part of the farm of Montecastello, by the neighboring lands of Varramista and by portions of the Florentine Guicciardini’s farm of Montopoli. It forms a homogeneous farming complex well-arranged in its activities: wine, woods cultivation (after 1000 a.C. they were implanted with the intent of farming exploitation through the periodic cut of copse) with recent afforestation of valley floors, olive trees cultivation and farm-holiday management.

The farm administratively belongs to the municipality of Pontedera, but for some periods in history, sections of it belonged to the lands of San Gervasio, Montecastello and Montopoli (“eminent castle” as Boccaccio said).These lands have been for centuries, in the high Middle age to the Carolingi’s time, in large part dominion – not only spiritual – of the bishops of Lucca, who already owned large lands beyond the Arno river, by the time upstream of the actual riverbed, and in Valdera.

The Romanesque parish church of San Gervasio, which was given religious power on a vast territory, had a baptismal font; a large quantity of monasteries and churches belonged to it and only at the time of the administrative rearrangements attempted by the Ottoman emperors, it became dependence of the imperial town of San Miniato, together with Palaia and Montopoli.

Many are the monasteries and the churches close and dependent on San Gervasio which are now completely destroyed: in the farm there is a hillock called Santa Lucia – hence the name – which differently from the barbed around, was evidently smoothed by man’s craft. Many are the ruins of the ancient monastery that can be discovered still today. A little below that hillock (120 m high) there is a vineyard over a slope with olive trees and at its end a well-preserved font with a big brick-made wash house which we suppose at the service of the destroyed monastery.

According to a legend the very ancient wooden statue (a material used back then because of the lack of stones in that alluvial area) was moved from the abandoned monastery and its baptismal font to the castle of San Gervasio. The statue disappeared and appeared again when in 1260, the baptismal font was given to Montecastello because – the story says – it could see the opposite hillock of Santa Lucia from the church of Montecastello. The legend could actually have historical foundation in the transferring of the baptismal fonts of the monasteries out of the civil jurisdiction in the feudatory castles first, and then in the municipalities which took over them.

Pontedera – in 1855 defined by Ripetti “great village” crossed by the “great middle way flanked by beautiful residences” and whose “weekly markets fall on Friday and are bountiful and maybe the most popular because of the favourable position of the village at the outlet of Pisa’s Valdarno so that its markets resemble likewise local fairs” [still mentioning Repetti] – in the most ancient time it was the last suburbs of Pisa protected by the so-called Armonico moat with a bridge on Era river close to the confluence with the Arno river, and because its ancestry was not from Pisa, nor its citizenship, it was subject to the patronage of the loyal Calcinaia, the same happened to the baptismal church of San Filippo e Iacopo built in 1271 for grant and initiative of San Martino in Kinzica. It was often ransacked because rebellious to Pisa, occupied by the Florentines who filled the moat, later reopened, and finally occupied by Florence after the passage of Charles VIII in 1435. The Florentines found an empty town (but certainly according to its politics of building loyal colonies on boundaries) so they transferred to Pontedera 100 families from Camporgiano in Garfagnana and 100 families from Albiano in Lunigiana who were exempted from any taxes for 50 years at first, and for additional 50 years later.

The Vineyards

History. The memory of the vineyards on our estate is lost in time. Works from the eighteenth century precisely state that already after 1000 a.C. “luxuriant olive trees” and many vineyards with “rural maples on terraces” in continous lines were on that fertile land between Montopoli and the sirocco side of Pontedera.
The excellence of this wine is locally recognized as ancient tradition. An old farmer of ours, whose family held as sharecropping the small farm Roma (the central upland among the three existent), told us that the produced wine was bought still on plants, before the grape harvest, and that the local mediator used to establish its price through some kind of auction.

Technical file. The vineyards have a total extension of 12 hectares, cultivated on three uplands (the hillock of Santa Lucia, the small farm Roma and “Borgo alla Cantina”) close to each other and divided by small recently afforested valleys. The vineyards are mostly exposed to south-east; the ground is of medium mixture with sands and Pliocene clays with interpositions of marine gravel’s lenses containing a big amount of fossil shells.
Vineyards have recently been renewed taking the sticks from the pre-existent vineyards so that the quality hasn’t changed. The implants are organised with about 6000 plants per hectare, raised as demi-lateral spur rope with a sixth of implant where of 220 x 70/80 cm which in the selective upbringing produce 1 Kg grapes per log and so a Bordeaux bottle per vineyard.

The grape harvest is manual in boxes, it traditionally starts with the harvest of Ciliegiolo at the end of August, then San Giovese and ends at the beginning of October with San Colombano. The wine-making takes place in steel vats under strictly controlled fermentation at 28° – 29° and peels’ steep for about two weeks, according to the year.

Our best wines are put to rest and aged in barriques and tonneaux of fine French oak, and then they continue their maturation in bottle where they are sharpened according to the wise precepts of oenologist Francesco Bartoletti, who decides times and cuts. Since 2003 Fattoria Santa Lucia takes part to the esteem project of minor Tuscany vineyards of the scientific pole of University of Pisa by providing services for native vineyards, specifically the clone Ciliegiolo for this reason some rows are directly managed by the Department of Agriculture.

Olive Tree Grooves, Wood and Paths

Explore our INTERACTIVE MAP

The beauty and variety of our property is admirable by walking or mountain-bike riding through the 12 km of perfectly kept paths. Villa Roma (shown on the map) is the starting point of various paths crossing our woods and the most beautiful spots of the estate.
One of these certainly is the valley lake gently downgrading on the lawn. Its small islet gives unforgettable glimpses through the sunset’s glares that blend with the water lilies and the flight of the migratory birds stopping in its water for a deserved rest.
Keeping strolling and climbing to the hillock of Santa Lucia the olive oil groove is reached. Here the soil suddenly becomes sandy, to remind us, together with its fossil evidence, of the presence of the sea which once washed these hills. Our olive trees have always been here, more than 800 plants covering the sunny slopes of the hill facing our medieval villages of Montecastello and San Gervasio. Descending from the hillock of Santa Lucia, exactly below the place where the ancient monastery was (its medioeval bricks from time to time still come out from the soil), intact and perfectly preserved is the ancient source. From it once the friars took water and used also as washhouse.
On the north part of the estate there are some Etruscan tombs. In the Cerreta wood some excavations by a local archaeological association discovered interesting terracotta evidence few years ago.