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Twenty kilometres northwest of Florence, on a hill covered entirely in olive trees, sits one of the most beautiful and least visited places in Tuscany. The village of Artimino. The Medici villa known as La Ferdinanda, nicknamed the Villa of a Hundred Chimneys. And a wine with a history so extraordinary that it makes Chianti Classico look like a recent invention.
I go to Artimino when clients ask for something different: a place that has all the history and beauty of the famous Tuscan wine zones, without the crowds, the tourist infrastructure, or the feeling that you’re following a well-worn path. The atmosphere there is particular, harder to define than a view or a tasting note. It feels like a place that has been doing the same things, slowly and well, for a very long time. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what it has been doing.
The Wine That Predates the Super Tuscans by Five Centuries
If you follow Italian wine at all, you’ve probably heard of the Super Tuscans: the wines made with Cabernet Sauvignon that broke the Italian rulebook in the 1970s and became international sensations. Sassicaia, Ornellaia, Tignanello. Revolutionary blends of Sangiovese and French varieties that were technically illegal under Italian wine law at the time.
What almost nobody mentions is that Carmignano, the wine produced around Artimino, had been blending Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon for five centuries before Sassicaia was a gleam in anyone’s eye. Long before the Super Tuscans became an international sensation, Carmignano was blending Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, a tradition officially protected by the Medici family as early as 1716.
The reason Cabernet Sauvignon ended up in Tuscany in the first place is one of those stories that sounds invented but isn’t.
Catherine de’ Medici and the French Connection
The Medici wine story of Carmignano began with the wedding of a pair of fourteen-year-olds in Marseilles in 1533. It was the exchange of wedding gifts between the French royals and the Medici family that brought the first Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to Tuscany, and they were planted on the hills near the Medici family villa at Poggio a Caiano, just nine miles west of Florence.
The fourteen-year-old in question was Catherine de’ Medici, who went on to become one of the most powerful and feared women in 16th century Europe, mother of three French kings and alleged architect of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Her personal legacy in French history is complicated. Her legacy in Tuscan wine is straightforward: she brought the vines that would define Carmignano for the next five hundred years.
Another Medici villa, Villa La Ferdinanda, was finished in 1600 in the nearby hamlet of Artimino. The Cabernet vines that Catherine’s wedding had introduced to the region were already well established in the hills around it.
Cosimo III and the World’s First Wine Appellation
In 1716, Grand Duke Cosimo III granted Carmignano wine its first real touch of nobility, giving it a sort of ante litteram DOC label and naming it among the best Tuscan wines worthy of protection.
This announcement by Cosimo III of Medici on September 24th, 1716, marked out the four best areas to produce high-quality wine in Tuscany: Chianti, Pomino, Carmignano, and Val d’Arno di Sopra.
This is the first legally defined wine appellation in history, anywhere in the world. Not France, not Spain: Tuscany in 1716, under a Medici grand duke who understood that where wine comes from matters as much as how it’s made. The French would not introduce their own appellation system for another two hundred years.
Carmignano holds the distinction of being the first and only DOCG in Tuscany often referred to as the Medici family’s wine. It received its DOC status in 1975 and DOCG in 1990.
Villa La Ferdinanda: The Hundred Chimneys
At the heart of Tenuta di Artimino lies the Villa Medicea, built in 1596 under the direction of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici. Designed by the architect Bernardo Buontalenti, this villa, known as La Ferdinanda, was inspired by the concept of a hunting lodge and completed in just four years.
The nickname comes from its roofline: dozens of chimneys of different shapes and sizes, each serving a different room, rising against the Tuscan sky in a way that makes the building look simultaneously grand and slightly eccentric. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
From a distance, approaching through the olive groves, the villa appears almost to grow out of the hill. The landscape around it is one of the most quietly beautiful in all of Tuscany: not the dramatic cypress-lined rolling hills of the Val d’Orcia, but something more intimate and less photographed, an ancient agricultural landscape that has been producing wine and olive oil for at least two thousand years. The Etruscans were here before the Romans; the Romans before the Medici. The hill has a long memory.
The estate today covers more than 700 hectares, including 80 hectares of vineyards and 18,000 olive trees producing extra virgin olive oil.
The Wines of Artimino
Carmignano DOCG is the wine that defines this zone. Thanks to a favourable microclimate, Carmignano is a sumptuous wine that combines the elegance of Sangiovese with the opulence of Cabernet Sauvignon. The result is an excellent wine with warm fruit, based on black cherries and blueberries, with a good body: elegant, with deep nuances that come from Cabernet.
The blend is regulated by law: at least 50% Sangiovese, between 10 and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, separately or combined, and small amounts of other traditional varieties. It is one of the smallest DOCG zones in Italy, which is part of why it remains relatively unknown outside serious wine circles.
Carmignano Riserva Grumarello is the estate’s top wine: longer aging, more concentration, the kind of bottle you open for something that deserves it. Notes of blackberry, tobacco, leather, and clove, structured and persistent.
Chianti DOCG is also produced here, a more immediately approachable wine: ruby red, notes of berry and violet, built for the table rather than the cellar. The Sangiovese, Canaiolo, and Colorino blend follows the same traditional approach that has been used on these hills for centuries.
Occhio di Pernice Vin Santo is perhaps the most unusual wine in the range: a sweet wine made from a blend that includes red grape varieties (Sangiovese and Canaiolo alongside Trebbiano and Malvasia), which gives it a distinctive amber-golden colour and a depth that sets it apart from typical Vin Santo. Notes of dried figs, toasted almonds, walnuts. Extraordinary with dark chocolate or aged cheese.
Artimino Today: A Living Estate
The estate is not a museum piece. Artimino has recently embarked on a new chapter, working with Riccardo Cotarella, one of Italy’s most respected winemakers, on a programme of research into the unique terroir of the estate, including the discovery of a clone of Sangiovese found only at Artimino. New single-variety wines have been added alongside the historic blends, including a Chardonnay and a Sauvignon that express the particular character of these soils in a completely different register.
The village of Artimino itself, not far from the villa, preserves its medieval character and houses a small but excellent archaeological museum with Etruscan finds from the surrounding area. The Etruscans, who were here before anyone else, apparently agreed with every subsequent civilization that this hill was worth living on.
Visiting Artimino
Artimino is 20 kilometres from Florence, a comfortable drive through landscapes that shift gradually from the suburban periphery of the city into something that feels very far from it. There is no meaningful public transport: a car or a guided tour is the only realistic way to get here.
The estate receives visitors for wine tastings and cellar tours by appointment. The restaurant Biagio Pignatta, named after the first butler of Ferdinando I de’ Medici, serves food that pairs naturally with the estate’s wines in a setting that would have been recognizable to the people who built the villa four centuries ago.
If you’re looking for a wine experience that most visitors to Tuscany never have, Artimino is worth the detour. The history is extraordinary, the wine is underappreciated, and the atmosphere is unlike anything else in the region: a place that has been continuously inhabited and cultivated for at least three thousand years, and shows it in the best possible way.
Interested in visiting Artimino as part of a wine tour from Florence? Explore our private wine tours or join one of our small group wine tours from Florence.
