STEFANO CARMASSI, sommelier who led a stage to discover the "Chianti Classico"

To guide Stage 11 of the Sommelier Wine Box (February 2019) we turned to sommelier Stefano Carmassi, who told us his story.

“I am interested in wine to understand the stories and places of local communities. I started as a boy in the 90s making Vermentino wine on the sea sands of Versilia with macerations on the skins, and I have now ended up among the vineyards of Castellina in Chianti in the heart of Chianti Classico.

I do training and teaching for Sommelier courses, with a natural predisposition for Tuscan and Umbrian enography.

I have a solid scientific background which does not hinder the in-depth study - my great passion - of the relationship between wine and spirituality in the viticulture of the monks of the Early Middle Ages.

Returning to wine as an element of aggregation, as a stimulator of creativity, as a catalyst for public spaces. A wine that is not exclusive but inclusive. It becomes so urgent to find that thread that reconnects us sentimentally to those farmer-monks full of passion and love for the land and its fruits.

I try to incessantly communicate the virtuosity of wines well anchored to the territory and the soil, which contrast with the gustatory homologations and concentrations so much sought after by contemporaneity and agribusiness.”

Stefano Carmassi