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Monica Raspi - Pomona
Monica Raspi in her family vineyards near Castellina in Chianti

New-Gen Chianti Classico Part 3: Pomona’s Monica Raspi

The veterinarian-turned-vintner achieved success with Sangiovese by learning to understand what the vines were telling her

Tonight at casa Camuto we are drinking a wine I recently discovered on my tour of New Generation Chianti Classico in Tuscany. The wine is Pomona and its made by one of the most unpretentious (but really really) good winemakers I’d met in some time. Her name is Monica Raspi, a former veterinarian who sold her clinic to take care of the family vineyards near Castellina in Chianti 14 years ago.

At first she had no idea what she was doing but she applied the same sensitivity to her Sangiovese that she did to her former patients. "A vineyard is like an animal,” she tells me in my latest column at Wine Spectator. “Maybe there is pain or a problem in one part or the other, and you have to understand why. Vineyards—like animals—don’t talk.”

For more on Raspi and Pomona, read NewGen Chianti Classico Part 3: Pomona at winespectator.com 

For more tales from NewGen Chianti Classico, see

Part 2: Monteraponi
Part1: Istine