The vegetative processes and maturation were regular until the first ten days of August, when a significant rise of temperatures, with low temperature range between day and night, and a long period of drought, have promoted and accelerated the process of sugars accumulation in the grapes causing in some cases a state of mild water stress in plants too.
In the first ten days of September, the temperature range between day and night increased with persistence of hot and dry days, we had rainfall only in recent days after over a month of warm and sunny weather.
The monitoring of the maturation curves on the grapes has detected a substantial advance of maturity of over 10 days compared to the latest harvests.
The grapes were perfectly healthy and intact, it was noticed some phenomenon of excessive sugar concentration, slight withering, in areas where the vines and the grapes have had some drought problems.
Regarding the quality of the contributions is confirmed an optimum condition with significant peaks of excellence, while for the amount we notice a slight decrease.
Grapes with an average sugar content exceeding 20, perfectly healthy and intact, with good phenolic maturity.
At the moment of racking red wines denote a significant presence of perfume, good alcohol content with great polyphenolic set with a satisfactory content of coloring substance, rich in extract, all confirming the achievement of high quality wines for the 2011 harvest with great tips excellence .
The quality of the products turned into wine is enhanced not only by the excellent grapes, but also by winemaking technologies, at the Cantina di Ponte a Chiani cleaning of white mosto before fermentation is winning and takes place at temperatures strictly controlled.
Regarding the red vinification we can confirm the selective validity of Metodo Ganimede, combined with the control of temperatures.
For this harvest , in our opinion , especially for the first period of vinification, it is a result of fundamental importance to be able to apply technologies that allow to cool and check the temperature of grapes, of "pigiati" and "mosti" from the beginning of fermentation, factors perfectly and rigorously applied in Cantina dei Vini Tipici dell'Aretino that has over four kilometers of refrigeration canals applied to winemakers as well as more than 80 meters of tube heat exchangers in coiled tubing (80 diameter), all served by more than 800,000 refrigeration units now available.
The wines have completed naturally the alcoholic and malolactic fermentation and they were used one part to the maturation in oak aging, one part in stainless steel with lees stirring operations in synergy to the practice of micro-oxygenation and the last part in the aging in concrete with natural micro-oxygenation.
Thanks to all processes products of high quality have been obtained with significant peaks of excellence.
