Podere Il Carnasciale

History

Podere Il Carnasciale occupies a small hillside property in the Valdarno di Sopra, in eastern Tuscany between Arezzo and Florence. The estate was established in the 1980s by the German couple Wolf Rogosky and Bettina Rogosky-Mundt, who came to the area as relative outsiders and built something with no precedent anywhere in Italy. Their central discovery was a single vine in the vineyard that did not match any known variety. It was eventually identified by ampelographers as a spontaneous natural crossing of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, a variety that existed nowhere else. They named it Caberlot, and the decision to dedicate the estate almost entirely to propagating and vinifying this one anomalous grape is what defines Carnasciale entirely. After Wolf Rogosky's death, Bettina and her son Moritz Edle von Wrangell continued the work, and Moritz has taken on an increasingly central role in running the property. The estate has never sought to expand or replicate Caberlot elsewhere. Its entire identity rests on this single site and this single variety.

Vineyards

The vineyards sit in the Valdarno di Sopra, a valley corridor that channels cooler air from the Apennines and produces a markedly different growing environment from the warmer Chianti Classico hills to the west. The property is small, with plantings concentrated on south-facing slopes at moderate elevation. Soils in this part of the Valdarno tend to be complex, with a mix of clay, schist, and sandy alluvial deposits that vary considerably across short distances. The Caberlot vines are old enough now to have genuine depth of root. A small quantity of white varieties is also grown on the property, accounting for the estate's white wine, Blanc'20. Specific farming certifications are not publicly documented in detail, though the scale of the estate and its history suggest careful, low-intervention viticulture.

Winemaking

The flagship wine, Il Caberlot, is made entirely from the Caberlot variety and is aged in small French oak barrels. It is one of the more unusual red wines produced anywhere in Tuscany, combining structural characteristics associated with Cabernet Franc, particularly its herbal precision and firm tannin, with a rounder, more giving mid-palate closer to Merlot. The result does not map cleanly onto either parent. Ottantadue, named for 1982, the year the variety was first identified, functions as a second wine and gives access to the house style at an earlier drinking window. Carnasciale Botte Grandi is aged in larger oak formats, producing a different textural register from the barrrique-aged Caberlot. Blanc'20 is the estate's white, vinified from varieties grown on the property. Production across all wines is very small. The winemaking approach is not documented in granular public detail, but the wines consistently show restraint in extraction and a preference for precision over weight.