Tuscany’s Most Elusive Grape Is As Tantalising As The Mystery of Its Provenance, Kept Alive By Three Generations Of Rogoskys: Moritz & Elle Rogosky Of Il Caberlot Let Us In On Family Conversations

“People think that my parents retired and bought a winery to enjoy a pleasant life making wine. And it’s not really like that. Il Carnasciale is something we live for.”

–Moritz Rogosky, Proprietor of Podere Il Carnasciale, of Il Caberlot

(Source: Carla-Elle Rogosky)

Moritz Rogosky’s best piece of advice to anyone is to learn as many languages as possible, though he confessed having an accent in every language. When we met in Singapore earlier, I spent most of the afternoon failing to find any Italian accent. His English seemed so nearly unaccented with perhaps a faint American and German shading underneath. 

Moritz grew up with German parents, Wolf and Bettina Rogosky, who were born in Berlin and Hamburg before the family “zigzagged around the world.” Düsseldorf for Wolf's highly notable advertising work, seven years in New York, then Paris, with Tuscany running alongside all of it. Wolf was an advertising man by trade, and by Moritz’s account a large personality. And personality really does show up very clearly on the label of their estate's grand vin, Il Caberlot – with a large painted ‘X’ one could identify from afar. 

The estate's Vigna Carnasciale (Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

Their estate is Podere Il Carnasciale, on a hilltop in the Valdarno di Sopra, east of Chianti Classico and north of Arezzo. The late Nicolas Belfrage MW once called Il Caberlot “the most famous cult wine you’ve probably never heard of.” It is made from a single variety, Caberlot, that grows nowhere else on earth and appears on no official Italian register of grape varieties. Antonio Galloni gave the 2018 a perfect score and reached for the comparison that has followed the wine ever since: “Imagine Cheval Blanc, but with a good dose of Tuscan sun.”

Wine importers often file Il Caberlot with the Super Tuscans, though Moritz quipped “I like to say, Tuscan? Totally. Super? I agree.” He clarified that Il Caberlot isn’t really part of the “Super Tuscan” category in wine style and identity, though it relates very much to the early rule-breaking spirit of producers as Le Pergole Torte and early Sassicaia – high-quality Tuscan wines once made outside restrictive DOC/DOCG laws.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

Underneath the scores and the soil types and the barrel talk, this is a wine estate that holds a family together on the same hill, and has kept giving them a reason to be in the same place ever since. Moritz is plainly aware of how that works, and of how precious time with family is. “I understand that time is not standing still,” he told us. “I will be part of this story now, and I have my time and my moment, but there’s definitely a future also sitting next to me.” He was referring to his daughter Carla-Elle Rogosky, who goes by Elle, who was sitting beside him during our interview.

We spoke to Moritz, Elle and the estate's technical director Marco Maffei over a long video call from the estate. What follows covers the frost and the naming and the buried magnums that Il Caberlot was built on, how a barrel has to perform to earn its place in Il Caberlot, why a single grape that grows on one hill is farmed across six separate plots, and what Elle’s generation is actually looking for in a glass.

“I understand that time is not standing still. I will be part of this story now, and I have my time and my moment, but there’s definitely a future also sitting next to me.”

–Moritz on succession, with Elle sitting beside him 

[88 Bamboo]: Moritz, you were a boy when this all began, old enough, the story goes, to have had a hand in the labels yourself, suggesting the mark be something a diner could recognise from clear across a restaurant, which is how the now-iconic “X” came to be so bold. And yet the path you took was anything but linear: you left for Paris and built a life in fashion, showing your own collections, before returning to the hill your father planted.

Could you take us back to a specific, early memory of the estate in those first years, a scene, a harvest, a moment with your parents among the young vines – a moment that you particularly cherish?

[Moritz]: I have photos of that day when my family was together in the vineyard. It's probably the only time that my family, my brother and me, my mother and father, did some gardening together, except maybe for the cherry tomatoes I grew on my balcony in New York. This was the day we planted the first vineyards.

A cherished memory of Moritz's with his brother Philip (far left) and his parents in the vineyards (Source: Moritz Rogosky)

As you know, my family comes originally from Germany, but we spent time in New York City and then the family moved to Paris. At the same time, Podere Il Carnasciale here in Tuscany started taking shape. We were always part of the story from near and from far.

I decided to live my own life: go to school first, learn English and then French, and then do fashion because I was living in Paris. And it's not the worst place to start a small fashion business, which is what I did. But from the very beginning, I knew that at one point, not too early and not too late, I would enter the estate and the winery. I always felt very much part of it, but with an estate being created from nothing, there were no generational expectations, so everyone was pretty much free to play their part, their role, more or less, at whatever time felt good for them.

 

[88 Bamboo]: What was the moment you decided to come back to be fully devoted to winemaking; was there a turning point, or did the pull build slowly over your years in Paris? Once you were home and doing the work, was there a “this is where I’m supposed to be” moment when the craft itself finally clicked, and was there anything about running Il Carnasciale that you were completely unprepared for?

[Moritz]: Honestly, I would say I was completely unprepared for what was expecting me. But that's also the case when you create a project like the one my parents did. You never really know. You do it with a lot of energy, passion, some creative spark.

For example, my father passed away early at the age of 56 back in 1996. That wasn't part of the plan. My mother and my family were certainly not prepared for that.

I went on to do the first part of my life in fashion in Paris, where we'd moved as a family, but I always knew that at one point I would probably move forwards and join the family. I knew also that I would remain based in Paris and I do live today in Paris. It's my base. It's where my daughter was born. It's where we live together with Isabelle, my wife, Elle's mother. So I do have an urban city base and that's very important for me. I knew I would not move to Il Carnasciale and live in a small hilltop farm. I need the city.

Moritz's mother, Bettina Rogosky (Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

And so what really happened, back in 2012, 2013, was that I was thinking about maybe moving on from fashion. They were difficult economic times also in the fashion world. My small business would have needed to grow and to expand and to be more structured.

And I was also getting signals, a little bit from my mother, but more from the person that my mother was actually working with at the time, Peter Schilling, who happens to be of German origin, but actually joined the estate because he was living in Tuscany. He was our second oenologist and winemaker and he'd been trained in Burgundy. So, also a very interesting profile. My mother met him in 2002 when she was looking for someone to join and to bring some expertise and precision and energy to the wines. I was not available back then. I was busy designing my menswear collections and getting them on the catwalk. So she reached out to him, and he was with us for a good ten years.

And I remember around 2011, 2012, Peter from time to time would call me and say, 'Moritz, it's about time that you show up a bit more often.' He wanted me in the story, to also help prepare me for it, and to position myself towards another generation. My mother represented more the present and the past, whereas he saw me as coming in with new ideas and a new approach, and also the willingness to move forwards, to grow up, try new things, and to ask some questions. So that happened around then.

“But our wines age much better than fashion collections. When it comes to fashion collections, you’ve seen them once, and you’re already looking forward to the next one. Our wines just get better with age.”

–Moritz on the ten years he spent showing menswear in Paris

[88 Bamboo]: How has the meaning of Il Caberlot changed for you, from a child watching a fascinating experiment take root to becoming the person now entrusted with running the estate?

[Moritz]: My father knew that something had to be brought back to life up here at Il Carnasciale. And that spark ignited something which has continued to grow: to move forwards, to grow in quality, in uniqueness, but also in size. The size of the team has grown and it's grown also in importance for me personally, in my life and for those closest around me.

So what my parents started almost as an experiment now actually has a future. And more and more I understand also that I have a decisive part to play in what is going on.

I understand that time is not standing still. I will be part of this story now, and I have my time and my moment, but there's definitely a future also sitting next to me. A future I hope to be part of for a long time. Time never stands still, but we've put something into motion. More and more, I have a feeling and a grasp for the fact that what's going on here is going somewhere.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Elle, the same estate must mean something slightly different to you: you grew up with Il Caberlot already a well-known cult wine, and came to it as both a family member and a writer who observes wine for a living. Unlike your father and grandfather who got onto wine as a second career, you were headfirst into it.

What is your own earliest memory of the wine, and when did you decide to have a hand in making it?

[Elle]: Of course, I was born in Paris, but as a child we spent so much time here at the estate, especially during summer and also harvests. My first memories aren't too specific, but I remember having a lot of childhood pictures taken in the cellar, seeing the grapes, seeing all this energy through the people that were working for the estate. So I have a big imagination that was built around winemaking.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

[Moritz]: Maybe always also seeing bottles of wine on the table?

[Elle]: And a family that is, as we say in French, 'bon vivant': a family that likes to eat, likes to drink. And of course, in the daily life, wine has always been part of our family. Also on the French side. So that's, I would say, almost quite classical.

What was a very specific turning point for me? I was studying in Paris at La Sorbonne. It was my final year, and I was doing a bachelor in history, and I do remember that Moritz invited me to join him for a tasting, and I think it was to go to Shanghai. And I was of course very keen to join my father to help him, to share our wines, even though in an amateur way for me.

It was during the time of the exams for La Sorbonne, and I had to pass them to get my bachelor. So I was very much in between. I was very tempted but felt that my priority was to validate this bachelor.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

I went to see my professors and I told them about the situation. My family works in wine, my father as well. They need me to promote our wine and handle those tastings. Consequently, I would miss two or three exams.

All my professors were fascinated and amazed by the fact that such a young person wanted to be involved in wine, which in France is a very important value. They told me, no worries, go do your thing with wine and we will manage. We will make you pass the exam another way. And they allowed me to not officially pass the exam, but they validated it. They actually pushed me to go and work for the family.

And so this in my mind was like, wow, even the most academic institution has such a recognition of wine and gives it a certain value. And I was like, okay, I think wine is something very special. I have the chance that it's already in my family. As you mentioned, something has already been built and I want to move forward with this. So that's, let's say, my earliest memory.

“I like to say, Tuscan? Totally. Super? I agree. But we are not really part of those Super Tuscan wines which are somewhat created, blended, marketed, given an identity in order to also immediately give a preconception of what to expect.”

–Moritz on where Il Caberlot sits in Italian wine

[88 Bamboo]: There are not many estates in the world run by three generations at once, and fewer still where the co-founder, that is, Bettina, at 82 (the very number that gives your Ottantadue its name) still numbers every single bottle by hand and keeps a notebook of the families who received each allocation. Bettina crushed the first vintage with her feet; you, Moritz, carry it now; and Elle represents what comes next.

What would you say are perhaps three or four defining moments for your estate that could tell its story from first generation to third? And was there a particular moment shared across the generations that became a turning point and strengthened the family’s resolve to uphold this estate and its uniqueness in the world?

[Moritz]: There've been a lot of moments. Singling out three or four is maybe a bit tricky.

Crucial moments, of course, were the frost in 1985, which froze the olive trees and enabled my parents to plant a vineyard. They had a project in the back of their minds and I have some early writings and letters. My father had written to friends and to winemakers, outlining a sort of project. There's a very early version from the 1970s which was very naive. A nice read, but very naive.

Then in the early 1980s, he really started having some precise ideas. The planting of the first vineyard, of course. And I will send photos of that moment. That is very important. I would say also my father's somewhat chance meeting with Remigio Bordini and them talking about a grape believed to be a natural crossing.

A chance meeting between Wolf Rogosky (left) and Remigio Bordini in the 1980s led to the great Caberlot (Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

My father's idea and decision to bottle the wine in magnums was certainly a stepping stone, a cornerstone of the whole story. As much, I would say, as my idea 25 years later to bottle Il Caberlot in so-called demi-magnums, since the 2013 and 2014 vintages, has also been an important moment. But again, so many more. I'm sure you have some to share.

[Elle]: Naturally I will also think about the creation of Ottantadue. As much as we built so much of our identity with the Caberlot grape, which we made become Tuscan but which is not coming from Tuscany, we were now creating something with the Sangiovese, which of course embodies Tuscany and Tuscan wine. I think for us, it was an important signal because it's as if we were giving a hand and a chance to the local grape. And I think that's important.

And of course, the project that Moritz and I share in a very intimate way is the white wine. That was definitely not part of the very initial project, and it naturally became part of the history of our estate. It's happening now, and it's for the future. That's, I would say, probably the last of the very defining moments. And for me, for example, it's a chapter we are just opening, and there is so much to write about it. And I'm very, very excited.

[Moritz]: But I would also say, even small things can be defining moments. The purchase of a new piece of land, for example, bringing in an exciting piece of machinery, making a plan for something unexpected. I personally like to make the most out of everything that goes on here. It can even be an encounter with people, something unexpected.

There are no such things as coincidences. Things are meant to happen. And so I have a strong belief and trust in good fortune and good luck, and the unexpected, which always provides a lot of pleasure and also a lot of inspiration to move forward.

 

[88 Bamboo]: And Moritz, if there is one thing about Il Carnasciale you would want to be certain passes on intact to Elle’s generation, what would it be?

[Moritz]: I gave a minute of thought to that. Always find a way to enjoy what you do, no matter how much stress is out there, whether it's stress from the climate and the sky.

My mother always gets very nervous when she looks at the weather forecast, especially at times of the harvest. And I say, Bettina, what can we do? Let's just get prepared, but let's see: we're very fortunate here with the weather and the climate and the biodiversity we have. So let's not just see stress. Let's see it as an opportunity.

I'm the same, whether the markets are difficult or the banks are giving us a hard time and there's stress again. Always find a way to make the best out of that. Get energy out of those sometimes somewhat intense moments.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

We are in one of the most beautiful spots on planet Earth, and we're working with nature, and we're very fortunate with that. So always be aware of that, and don't get lost in the everyday current affairs. Always manage to have an overview. And just remember how fortunate we are doing what we're doing and being able to share a part of that with people around the world. Et voilà.

“All my professors were fascinated and amazed by the fact that such a young person wanted to be involved in wine, which in France is a very important value. They told me, no worries, go do your thing with wine and we will manage.”

–Elle on telling her Sorbonne professors she would miss her final exams to pour her family’s wine in Shanghai

[88 Bamboo]: Elle, looking the other way down the line, what is the one thing you know would never change? And is there something you hope your own generation will get to build on?

[Elle]: Sure. In a very simple way, I had also reflected on the question and I think it's quite simple because what I learned from our family is not to change my approach to wine as an artisanal good, that is, fermented grape juice.

So it's something coming from nature that we transform, but it's meant to be very pure. It's meant to be drunk. And therefore, we just try to make the best out of it and the best quality.

So it would be, I would say, the approach of wine as an artisanal good. That is something I will always defend. And I think it was also back then the approach of my grandfather, my father and now it's also mine.

And I'm quite aware that my generation is totally in a flood of technology and, at the end, so much insecurity, because the world is changing so fast. I think it's hard to understand the world we are living in right now, and I feel there is a lot of anxiety, especially in the younger generation. But I am happy to see that there are some people, and actually many, who are showing a willingness to get back to some material things, to nature basically, and to reconnect with craftsmanship, with some security and trying to understand the world rather than to rule it.

And I think this is something I want to defend. By doing winemaking and promoting wine itself, we're defending that craftsmanship. We are also connecting with people from my generation who share the same values and are happy that through wine they can get this feeling of being close to nature and feeling connected to the world they're living in.

 

[88 Bamboo]: When you observe how the earlier generations work (whether in the vineyard, or cellar, or blending table), how does their approach speak to your Gen-Z sensibilities? Do you ever find yourself wanting to steer it in a slightly different direction?

[Elle]: Honestly, of course. First of all, I think the approach of wine really changes according to where you are in the world, because countries have different approaches to wine, different histories. Some countries are called traditional, then there is a new world. Among all this, there is a mosaic of people and of generations, and this and that.

But in my experience, honestly, I think people, and also the youngest generation, are way more sensitive to small-scale realities that have a true connection to a land, to a territory that has a story to share.

Even though there are millions of stories to share, I think the human connection that can be created through wine is really what speaks the most to the youngest generation, because there is so much information everywhere, accessible whenever you want.

But the human connection and even just the taste, the materiality of wine, are values that could be called somehow old school, but that I feel are the most current and contemporary values that the generation could be sensitive to. So that's a bit what I wanted to say before: this kind of craftsmanship and, let's say, nature values are the ones that to me have the longest future.

[Moritz]: Wine is a magic potion. Some wines are more magic than others, but I'm always also very impressed by what our wines actually do to people in a good way, what they apparently bring to them together with the story, the meeting, whether it's here or somewhere else.

Over the years I've seen that our wines do seem to have this power to do something to people. Sometimes even change their lives. There are some people out there who've become our best ambassadors or who are completely fascinated by the story and who somehow feel that they're part of this family here.

 

[88 Bamboo]: When we stand back from the scores and the rarity, the thing that remains about Podere Il Carnasciale seems to be the sheer quantity of imagination in it. An advertising man dreamt up a wine from a grape nobody has named, coined the name himself, dressed it in a hand-painted mark that looks more like modernist art than a wine label, chose to sell it almost only in magnum, and then, when your family was offered the chance to finally learn what Caberlot really is, decided the question was worth more than the answer. I recall that you even jokingly offered to make up an interesting story behind the figure on the label of Ottantadue to satisfy us at our tasting in Singapore. Many estates only speak of terroir and tradition; yours seems built with an additional ingredient of a very creative nerve.

Moritz, as the person closest to it, how would you define the essence, the real through-line, of Podere Il Carnasciale? Is it a special grape variety, the imagination, the refusal to do the obvious, or something else that has to be true of every bottle for it to be unmistakably yours?

[Moritz]: What you've just mentioned, the grape and the magnum and all of those choices or decisions or ideas are very much part of the estate, but I always like to think back on how it all began.

My parents, my father born in Berlin, my mother in Hamburg, far away. I would say simple backgrounds, intelligent but simple backgrounds. And the fact that they moved a lot. They zigzagged around the world. From Berlin and Hamburg to Düsseldorf for advertising, then from Düsseldorf to New York City for seven years, then from New York City to Paris. And at the same time here in Tuscany.

 Wolf Rogosky was an advertising veteran who was behind some of the most successful European campaigns of his day; including the design of the rounded 'VAG' lettering adopted by Volkswagen (Source: Ideenstadt Düsseldorf)

That really shows that they were out there to go places and not to settle for anything. Always looking for something new, travelling, meeting people, tasting food, drinking wine, going after culture. And so that really became a central part of their life.

And my father, again coming from a simple background but self-cultivated, very literate, intellectual, very creative, was always drawn to people. And in spite of his big personality, quite unique, he was somebody very approachable. Someone who made a great impact on people, but who was also very interested in other people, not just in himself, rather the opposite.

And that is, I think, at the core of what made all of this come together: it's about people, the uniqueness of people, the pleasure of meeting people, of sharing something we do with people. And that's something we need to keep alive here. And we need to stimulate it. That is first and foremost: it's the people that make a difference, that write a story, and that give a future to a project such as Podere Il Carnasciale.

“I have an accent in every language… in Italian too.”

–Moritz on a highly international upbringing spent moving between Germany, New York and Paris

[88 Bamboo]: And since you came to all this from Paris couture, where does the couturier’s eye still show up in how you run Il Carnasciale, from the labels to the very shape and cut of a finished wine?

[Moritz]: Certainly. Thank you for the couture appellation. It was actually a little bit less haute couture. I was designing menswear prêt-à-porter, which I was putting together with my studio, showing on the catwalk and then selling to stores as far as Japan. That was really my story for about ten years. And so I was very much into that.

And I guess I've always been the eye of the family. I can't help seeing everything somehow. Nothing escapes me, sometimes to a point where I almost feel like I see too much. Every line, colour, shape and volume spurs a reaction in me. It always has and always will.

The 'eye' of the family, the young Moritz suggested a wine label with a large cross that a diner could recognise from across a restaurant, which is how the now-iconic “X” came to be so bold (Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

I would say I haven't brought any fashion aspect into the winery. I like to distance fashion from wine. We have neighbours here in the valley, the Ferragamo family, a famous family from fashion who also have a winery, the Sette Ponti family, the Morettis and so on, who've brought a kind of fashion attitude, maybe even, I would say, more fashion brand marketing, into their wineries. That's perfectly fine.

I like to take from fashion. I do like the fact that we produce a new wine every year. In fashion, I had two collections every year, spring-summer and autumn-winter. Fortunately we only have one harvest a year.

But there's always something new, and of course, with every new vintage, we here at Il Carnasciale really do want to craft the wine of that vintage, not reproduce the same wine as the year before. So there is something creative and there is a certain desire to move forward and to do something new, or at least as fresh and surprising and somewhat new as possible with the new vintage. So there's a little bit of a link maybe to fashion.

[Moritz]: But our wines age much better than fashion collections. When it comes to fashion collections, you've seen them once, and you're already looking forward to the next one. Our wines just get better with age.

[88 Bamboo]: That’s certainly an important distinction to note!

[Elle]: I just wanted to add: of course, it's another approach, with this kind of connection and parallel that you are making, but still, your fashion, your creativity, in a conscious or unconscious way, I think is also totally reflected in the labels themselves because each time people discover our wines, they are quite fascinated by the labels.

And the question is always: Who made them? Who designed them? Even from the Il Caberlot label to, of course, the Ottantadue and also now the whites. And I think most of the labels have been designed by Moritz. For the white, I also had my input.

And I think this creative value that is very much part of our family is very much reflected in the wine labels, but in a very natural way. It's not about marketing; it's just what we like and who we are. And that's just something I wanted to add.

[Moritz]: A lot of things go into the creative part. As a kid, I spent a lot of time at my father's advertising agency. Creation was not done on computer screens. There was a graphic studio, there were graphic designers cutting, pasting things together, building mock-ups and so on. So I still like to keep that kind of approach alive.

And I remember I redesigned the boxes and cartons for our wines a year ago. And I had a great time cutting apart boxes, taping letters, fonts and so on to the boxes and doing these mock-ups by hand. We do that instead of just doing it with some 3D software or just letting our supplier finalise it.

[Elle]: We're quite low-key on technology. We don't use a lot of technology, even the white wine label: I designed it on Pages, so it's not at all specialist software. But I think we like it because it's very much us.

“Many people, because of the name Caberlot, make an immediate assumption and assume it’s a blend of Cabernet and Merlot. We have to say no, that would be way too easy. It’s actually a single grape variety.”

–Elle on the misconception the estate lives with daily

[88 Bamboo]: Elle, you have the rare double vantage of being both inside the family and a writer who tastes widely across the wine world: from the outside looking in, what do you think makes Carnasciale unlike other wines that you have written about? And with your vantage as both family and wine writer, is there an essence you see in Il Carnasciale that you could put into words for our readers?

[Elle]: Moritz, I think, already mentioned the people tasting and the effect of the wine on them, and how such moments can be very meaningful to us and to the tasters.

What keeps making me fascinated, motivated and basically happy is that there is not a single moment where I shared our wines with someone, whether familiar or not familiar with the wine or with our history, where they were not surprised. Maybe slightly confused, and saying, "I never tasted such a wine."

Even as you said, I have the chance to taste many different wines as a journalist, but also with many different people who have a huge knowledge about wine, who are from the oldest generation and whom I respect a lot. And so I give them a lot of credibility.

And honestly, tasting with them and having the opportunity also to share our wines with such people and seeing their reaction, when they're somehow wordless, it's something that validates that what my family started and what I'm bringing forward is definitely very unique. And I really, really want to protect it. And to just keep working for that and to defend our singularity.

I would say it's my experience of tasting our wines with other people, because it's very important to confront yourself with several people. If you keep just among yourselves, it's too close-minded. We are always being very open-minded. That's definitely what I would say.

 

[88 Bamboo]: The wine world has never quite agreed on where to shelve Il Caberlot. Some importers and experts, James Suckling among them, tend to file it with the Super Tuscans, and on the loosest reading it fits the template: an ambitious Tuscan red, built on a French-parented grape, sold outside the traditional appellations as IGT Toscana. Yet another narrative is that the whole point of Il Caberlot was a wine that invited no direct comparison with anything else. There is a deeper irony too: a grape that arrived from elsewhere has, after four decades on one Tuscan hill, become arguably as local as the family who planted it.

Moritz, how do you actually see Il Caberlot in the landscape of Italian wine: as part of the Super Tuscan story, as a deliberate outlier from it, or as something that sits outside that frame altogether? Does being filed as a Super Tuscan, and sold as a premium IGT, help the wine find its audience or get in its way?

[Moritz]: I like to say, Tuscan? Totally. Super? I agree. But we are not really part of those Super Tuscan wines which are somewhat created, blended, marketed, given an identity in order to also immediately give a preconception of what to expect – wines growing in a totally different climate from ours near the coast. And often much more the work of winemakers and the technology in the cellar, because again, they are aiming to achieve a certain kind of final product or taste, and so much more than maybe the expression of a vineyard, a microclimate, a particular sky above, an altitude or even a specific grape variety, unless it's maybe Merlot. 

There's a lot of Merlot because there was a lot of demand for Merlot, and Merlot is a pretty easy grape to work with and to make very expressive. So I have nothing against these wines, because their role was vital. There's an audience for them. They were an important part of the recent history of Tuscan wines. I would say they brought Tuscany back onto the map and back into the markets.

I like people – I have nothing against people who will call our wines a Super Tuscan. I also know that often they will start with the classic Super Tuscans and then with time move on to wines like ours because there's only so much Ornellaia, so much Masseto and whatever that you can drink.

At one point you usually tend to move on, looking for something more rare. Maybe a little bit lighter and dynamic on the palate and wines with maybe a little bit more identity and wines which do not tend to be almost the same every year. And so that's fine.

My father, my parents were back then inspired by certain wines, which today some people will still call Super Tuscans. But those were wines like Le Pergole Torte. Or even Sassicaia in the early days. I remember my parents discovered Sassicaia in New York. This must have been the mid-1980s, so it was the early vintages. And back then it was a vino da tavola, just like Le Pergole Torte, vino da tavola.

These were wines made by people with a vision working against the rules. People who wanted to produce a wine in a certain way because they felt that this would be the most personal and expressive and unique wine that they could create.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

Early wines by Vecchie Terre di Montefili, which is an estate here in Chianti Classico, which I think Remigio Bordini was actually working for back then. Or even if we go to France, I remember my father really got into the wines of Mas de Daumas Gassac, which I know well, but only thanks to my father. This was also, I think, in the late 1980s, early 1990s.

Mas de Daumas Gassac was being heralded as the most expensive vin de pays, country wine out there. And so, again, because of making wines differently, Trévallon, for example, whom they visited, also somebody working completely against the rules, planting a grape variety, Cabernet Sauvignon, where he was not legally allowed to do so. That was fine. He declassed it as vin de pays. Today they've actually created an appellation around the grape variety.

These wines, which some people will call Super Tuscans today, actually did inspire my family.

We're fine being on our own, IGT Toscana. The only advantage of IGT Toscana is the fact that there are no rules. You're pretty much free to do whatever you want. And even the fact that it says Toscana, IGT Toscana, I think you're still allowed to blend in up to 15% of wines that come from outside of Tuscany. So it doesn't really mean anything.

But it's good because it allows us to write Toscana on the label, and that's very important because otherwise, we can't write Toscana. We cannot put Toscana in the address of the winery, for example. So that matters, because it's an important message for people to remind them that Caberlot does come from Tuscany.

We're not part of an appellation. We could be. We have the Valdarno di Sopra DOC around us, and we are part of that with the Sangiovese di Ottantadue. But there would be no sense in joining, in seeing Caberlot enter the DOC appellation. How can an unregistered, unrecognised grape variety follow the rules of an appellation? So that just doesn't work out. We're fine. We'll be IGT Toscana for a long time. 

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale / Il Caberlot)

“And I guess I’ve always been the eye of the family. I can’t help seeing everything somehow. Nothing escapes me, sometimes to a point where I almost feel like I see too much. Every line, colour, shape and volume spurs a reaction in me.”

–Moritz on the eye he brings to the estate, from the bold ‘X’ on the label to the cartons he still mocks up by hand

[88 Bamboo]: Elle, since you write about wine and move between Paris and the estate, how do you find yourself describing Caberlot to people who reach for the nearest label, and is there a framing you think finally does it justice?

[Elle]: I would almost say that it requires some curiosity and also maybe to go beyond some preconceived ideas. But Caberlot is always a continuous encounter with something unknown because we don't really know about this grape variety. It's always offering something special.

And I don't want to just reframe what Moritz said regarding the IGT Tuscany. But I feel very proud to have it because I don't think it's meaningless at all. I think being with IGT and, as you mentioned, Vin de France in France for example, for me it shows that an estate is defending somehow an approach of freedom and liberty, which to me is quite the essence of winemaking, because you cannot reproduce the same winemaking every vintage, because every vintage is so different.

To me, it's a key word of an estate that allows itself to somehow manage each vintage the way it is, and in its own way. So for me, it's a value. And Tuscany is very important because, as Moritz said, we are definitely part of this territory, and it's another very important key word. So that's what I would put forward to someone who's never seen the label.

 

[88 Bamboo]: So much has now been written about Il Caberlot, the grape that officially does not exist, the buried bottle of Sassicaia, the theatre-hall verticals, the perfect score, that the estate has fortified into a set of familiar legends.

After all these years and all this ink, is there a persistent misconception about Il Caberlot or the estate that either of you would love to set right? 

[Elle]: Sure. First thing, it's that it's not a blend. Many people, because of the name Caberlot, make an immediate assumption and assume it’s a blend of Cabernet and Merlot. We have to say no, that would be way too easy. It's actually a single grape variety.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

[Moritz]: And then also sometimes people say, 'Oh, so you made the crossing in a lab.' And that's the second thing I sometimes have to correct. I say, no. Nature did it. The variety was discovered in abandoned vineyards, where apparently the human hand was not present anymore. And we believe that something happened without exactly knowing what.

I would say time and the many vintages now tell us more. The estate started with one single vineyard. Today we have six distinct plots, so we're getting a lot more information back from these individual vineyards, the way the variety is moving forwards, the way the vines are ageing, the way the vines are behaving faced with climate. And so I would say we're discovering more about the variety and that's good. That makes sense as well.

Another misconception is that people think that my parents retired and bought a winery to enjoy a pleasant life making wine. And it's not really like that. Il Carnasciale is something we live for.

We as a family plus our team of ten people love what we do, we live for what we do, but we totally live from what we do as well. We have a very tight economy, and that's something which keeps us on the ball. It's not a hobby, far from it. It's an enterprise which is going places, and that is important.

Also, people are always a little bit confused about where we actually come from. They hear an accent in my language when I speak English or when I speak Italian. So we may have been born in Germany, grown up in New York City, born in Paris, spent a lot of time in France. Tuscany has definitely adopted us, so we feel very legitimate here. I would say very open-minded.

“I think it’s hard to understand the world we are living in right now, and I feel there is a lot of anxiety, especially in the younger generation. But I am happy to see that there are some people… showing a willingness to get back to some material things, to nature basically, and to reconnect with craftsmanship… and trying to understand the world rather than to rule it.”

–Elle on what her generation is reaching for.

[88 Bamboo]: And on the other side of the coin, could you share something about the wine, the vineyard, the family or the hill that very few people know, a detail, a story or a small experiment that has never quite made it into print?

[Moritz]: You pretty much found out all the secrets, from the buried bottle of Sassicaia. We're not quite sure which vintage it is, so that's the one thing we don't know. But one day we will maybe find out.

I can tell you that when the second vineyard, La Selva, was planted in 1999, it was not a bottle of Sassicaia that went under the first plant. It was actually a magnum of Caberlot. So Sassicaia was here to give a bit of inspiration for the first vineyard. From now on, when we plant, we put a magnum of Caberlot under the first vine of the new vineyard.

I like to call our hill Magic Mountain, because we are on a specific, particular mountain, part of the Chianti mountains. And that's a name that our neighbour Luca Sanjust at Petrolo likes to use as well. We call ourselves the two left-bank wineries on a magic mountain, where we do have the potential to produce something unique.

And I think very few people actually know, unless they've come here and understand how small the winery actually is. And the fact that when my parents discovered Il Carnasciale back in 1972, there was no road. They walked up the hill. There was no vineyard. There was no water, there was no cellar, there was no electricity.

And it's quite amazing to see how far we've come. We've kept things very simple, but still life has been brought back. And I think when my parents came up here the first time, they must have felt that this was a unique spot with incredible views, an old farm still standing, but nobody had been living here for over thirty years. And they just felt compelled to start something, to bring something to life, and to put as much of themselves as possible into that project.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Elle, from your double vantage as family and writer, is there a part of this estate’s story you feel is under-told, and would most like to bring into the light?

Is there something about the estate that the industry built around wine writing and communication is still not fully capturing? What’s a question or fact that you know from growing up in the family behind this cult wine that you wish a wine writer would ask your family about Caberlot?

[Elle]: I think it's what Moritz said that is not often recalled: that the history of this winery started from zero. There were no existing vineyards there. There was no road, and it really comes from an intention, from a passion, and from a vision.

And that's something I like to remember because it's not easy to start a winery, a wine estate from the very beginning. And honestly, today, if I hadn't had the chance to have a family that had such energy and vision back then, I'm not sure, with the current conditions, as much on the climate angle as the market situation, that I would have the courage to start it.

So that's something, even though some people know it or write about it, that I would like to always underline: that it started from the very beginning, with planting the first vineyards. And that's something very important to me.

(Source: Carla-Elle Rogosky)

[Moritz]: And we are in a kind of no man's land. Chianti Classico is the geographical limit, only a couple of kilometres away, but we are perfectly situated in the triangle between Florence, Siena and Arezzo.

Here, in the Val d'Arno di Sopra, you have to go back pretty far in time, back to 1716, when Cosimo de' Medici talked about the Val d'Arno di Sopra as a region of potential for quality grape farming and wine production.

But in recent years, the Val d'Arno di Sopra was always a no man's land. There have always been vineyards, but not at all the recognition and importance of Chianti Classico over here or Montalcino down there. So that also added to the kind of courage it took to actually create a wine in the middle of nowhere. 

“I like to call our hill Magic Mountain… And that’s a name that our neighbour Luca Sanjust at Petrolo likes to use as well. We call ourselves the two left-bank wineries on a magic mountain.”

–Moritz on the hill the estate sits on

[88 Bamboo]: Caberlot grows in only one place on earth, your own hillside. But interestingly, you farm it across several very different parcels: the original high vineyard on galestro over rock, others on loess, on shell-based sand, and on sandy ground above the limestone of an ancient salt lake, each with its own altitude, aspect and training, from the first gobelet bushes to guyot and cordon on the younger plots. In effect you have built a small map of how a unique grape variety changes with the ground beneath it.

Could you take us into that map: what does each kind of site give you, and how do you read and use those differences when you assemble Il Caberlot?

[Marco Maffei]: The main differences can be divided into two main categories. The first is between old and young vines. Obviously, older vines offer greater complexity in terms of both aromas and structure, while younger vines offer more aromaticity and acidity. In this sense, young plots are used primarily for the wine CARNASCIALE BOTTE GRANDE.

Map of Podere Il Carnasciale's vineyards across Valdarno di Sopra (Source: Moritz Rogosky)

[Moritz]: It's true, as you said. Caberlot at Il Carnasciale started here with the vineyard planted back in 1986, 0.3 hectares, very small. We then started to expand.

We were always looking for small plots of land, because often when somebody was selling land or vineyards, it was everything or nothing. We were looking, given the size of the estate, for small opportunities of land. The first one happened in 1999, then in 2004, then in 2010.

I'm driven very much by the idea to get more feedback, more knowledge about the variety thanks to different microclimates, different soils, different altitudes, different orientations.

The iconic balze - eroded clay-and-sandstone formations unique to the Valdarno (Source: Discover Arezzo)

[Elle]: It's just following the whole concept of having several plots and several terroirs and, at the end, several expressions of one single grape.

[Moritz]: And when it hails, for example, here on this vineyard, the sun can be shining on a vineyard a couple of kilometres down the valley. It's also the fact that we are now quite spread out, and there's a bit of distance, which requires a big team in order to be very reactive in the various vineyards.

The fact of not having all the vineyards around the estate is definitely an advantage. It makes life and logistics a little bit more complicated, but it remains an advantage.

And I was thinking that maybe to answer also this question with more precision, I would put together an email detailing the various plots, and also with some information and some more personal notes about these various vineyards, how they came about, how we see them today, what position they have in the final wines and where we see them going.

[88 Bamboo]: For readers to really grasp what kind of grape Caberlot is, could you unpack how those site signatures show up in the separate lots before combining them?

[Marco Maffei]: As for the soils, the difference lies primarily in the structure of the soil. Stony soils with little organic material will result in more aromatic, less concentrated wines. Conversely, soils with more clay will yield more structured but less aromatic wines.

(Source:  Podere Il Carnasciale)

In the middle of these varieties of terroir lies our best vineyard, called Vigna Vincaïe, which has a strong presence of sand, giving it an excellent balance between aroma and structure.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

Altitude significantly influences only the Carnasciale vineyard, which, at close to 500 metres above sea level, is always quite cool. For the other plots, since there is no significant difference between the altitudes of the vineyards, what has the greatest impact is the microclimate of each individual vineyard.

Therefore, we have the Vincaie and Pirelli vineyards, which have marked temperature variations, and the Selva and Volpaie vineyards, where this difference is less present.

The estate's Vigna Volpaie (Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

[88 Bamboo]: Moritz, how would you describe the thread that stays unmistakably Caberlot across every one of these plots, the signature the different soils dress up differently but never disguise?

[Moritz]: I would say our knowledge grows with every vintage. We know that certain plots are probably going to be the ones that we will harvest first because stress might set in or animals might start wanting to get in, whether it's the deer or the birds or some insects. We pretty much have an agenda which starts getting clear as we approach the harvest date.

And we apply the same sort of care for the harvest in every vineyard. There's not one vineyard which is harvested by hand and the other one by machine. Everything is done by hand at the latest date possible, at optimal maturity. We sort by hand.

I would say one thing that we could probably find in all of the vineyards: just before harvesting, we walk through the vineyards to have a look and also to taste the grapes, the berries from the plants. So once we get a feeling and we start tasting the potential spice and peppery notes of Caberlot, then we know that harvest is not far away. That's something we look for in all of the vineyards.

But we definitely will get, let's say, sweeter grapes in certain plots; we'll get more spicy, peppery grapes in other plots. But there is a common denominator we look for everywhere.

“Over the years I’ve seen that our wines do seem to have this power to do something to people. Sometimes even change their lives.”

–Moritz on what he has watched their wines do to people

[88 Bamboo]: One of the pivotal rituals of your cellar happens each May, when every barrel is tasted blind, months before the September bottling, and sorted: the most complex, structured and aromatic lots are chosen for Il Caberlot, while the more immediate and approachable ones become Carnasciale.

When the winemakers sit down for those blind tastings, what are you actually looking for in a barrel that says “this is Caberlot”: is it structure, aromatic completeness, ageing potential, or something harder to name? How do you keep Il Caberlot recognisably itself from one vintage to the next?

[Elle]: Honestly, I think it's very much about following your intuition and also knowing your plots and your terroir. Because as we discussed just before, we have those different plots that give us different expressions of Il Caberlot.

And when we conceive the final blend, which should reflect as much a vintage as the Caberlot, let's say, identity, I would say I consider it as a little creature where each plot will bring an element.

And for example, to me it's something very personal, but that's why I talk about intuition. I know that Carnasciale, the oldest plot, which somehow is more lean but very precise, gives me this kind of bone of the final blend. Whereas another vineyard, for example Vincaie, which is our biggest plot, is honestly beautiful. We have a very rich expression of the grape, very complex in the aromatics. For me, it's bringing us the flesh of the wine.

And so having all these plots and blending them together, selecting the barrels tasted all blind of course, I think that's how we achieve the final construction of Il Caberlot. And at the end it's quite simple. I really defend also the art of blending, or just this process, because the idea is to reach something not heavier, just the balance and the complexity we are looking for.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

[Moritz]: I would say the art of assembling, because we're not really blending. We're assembling Caberlot from different plots.

Something decisive did take place. Up until the 2018 vintage, the second wine, Carnasciale, was declassified barrels. We produced one wine, and then in May, sat down to taste blind through every barrel, and we would declassify a certain amount of barrels to become the second wines: somewhat leaner wines, more fruit-forward wines, more accessible wines, maybe lacking a little bit of structure or those characteristic notes of Caberlot.

In 2019 we decided to bring in some change. We purchased two botti grandi, forty-hectolitre large casks, built for us in Burgundy by Marc Grenier for the production of the second wine. Also because sometimes the difference between the grand vin, Il Caberlot, and second wine, Carnasciale, was too small. The wines were too similar when they were just declassified barrels.

So we decided to change the production process a little bit. We now source the grapes for the second wine in the two younger vineyards. We ferment and vinify them, a larger amount of wine, forty hectolitres, and age it in the large casks for about the same time, about two years. And so 2019 was the first vintage where Carnasciale saw a somewhat different production process.

I have to admit, the reaction was very positive. The wine has gained in personality and singularity. It's a vibrant expression, a very profound vibrant expression of the Caberlot fruit. Whereas Caberlot being aged in those small barrels over a long time will go more towards spice. And that has helped to make a nice distinction between the two wines.

And very interesting for us also to work with a large volume of wines and not just small lots of 225 litres. So that's a decisive change. And since the 2022 vintage, we've also put it on the label. So Carnasciale is now labelled as Carnasciale Botte Grande, which refers to these large casks.

[Marco Maffei]: As you rightly mentioned, the barrique tasting seeks to identify the barrels with the greatest ageing potential. This doesn't just mean structure; we'll also seek out the barriques with the best balance in terms of acidity and volume and the best 'Caberlot' aromatic typicity.

[88 Bamboo]: I see, thank you. I noticed that there's the Botte Grande Plus, which apparently is aged for a longer period of time.

[Moritz]: The Botte Grande Plus is a special edition. In 2023, we knew that we would not have enough wine to produce Caberlot and the second wine of the 2023 vintage. We had a bit more wine in 2022 and, thinking ahead, we said we would do two versions of Carnasciale.

We'll do the classic Botte Grande, twenty-two months in the cask, and we'll keep some wine in a second Botte Grande for about six or seven months, and that became the Botte Grande Plus. The wine spent almost thirty months in a cask, and we have to say the result is spectacular. So this thirty-month ageing might well become the standard production process.

By having two versions of the second wine, we found a way to have a second wine for the 2023 vintage, which had not provided enough wine to produce one. But yes, we're definitely going to move towards a longer ageing for the second wine.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Working alongside your oenologist and technical director Marco Maffei, with the consulting winemaker Peter Schilling and the agronomist Remigio Bordini who found the vine in the first place, could you tell us how the objectives of the winemaking team have changed from when the winery was first founded to today? What are the biggest discussions the winemaking team is having now, and where are they looking to go towards?

[Moritz]: Interesting. Things certainly have changed. When I think back to Peter, not so long ago, very interesting guy. Again, German origin, trained in Burgundy. Very dynamic, but he would refuse to touch a computer. Peter did nothing by computer. He said, it's all here, it's all here at the tip of my tongue. Which was interesting, very exciting at a certain point in time.

We've definitely grown up since then. Marco and his assistant Tommaso, who is also a trained and certified oenologist, have brought in a lot of precision. A lot of professionalism. We are much more prepared for things that can happen during vinification, during the ageing, before the harvest.

We've really put together a team. Today we have a team of ten people. I like to remind you: the youngest guy is 20. The most senior member of the team is 72. Marco is kind of in the middle of all of that, which is nice, which is very good.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

There's a great generational exchange, people coming in, learning, being formed, being trained and feeling part of a team, feeling part of an estate. And that's very important. Bringing them into the estate and making them really feel part of it and close to everyone is so very important. Giving responsibility to every member of the team and allowing him to do his best in his particular field of responsibility and to be proud of what he brings into the final product is very important.

On this discussion of the winemaking team, for example: as I'm on the road a lot, some of the most important discussions recently took place between Elle, Marco and Tommaso regarding the white wine at its last stage, regarding certain aspects of vinification and fermentation.

And I'm very comfortable with that also. I may be somewhere across the world travelling or in my office in Paris, but I feel less of a need to be here when important discussions take place or decisions are made. As long as I'm informed and don't find out things too late, I usually give a green light, or as much of a green light as is required from me in order for things to move forward and give everyone the feeling that they're part of something that's in motion and going places.

 “Even the youngest vintage of Caberlot should be approachable in its youth, and the idea is not to craft a wine you then have to wait decades for before it finally opens itself.”

–Elle on how Caberlot is meant to be drunk

[88 Bamboo]: What are some particularities or fickleness of Caberlot that must be watched out for or paid extra attention to, and that must be treated differently from other varieties?

[Marco Maffei]: The variety is very difficult to grow, especially in spring and during the budbreak and flowering. The full production potential of the year is determined in those few weeks. Heat tolerance, however, is very good. For this reason, I would say the ideal season is a dry spring with a hot summer. In general, the Caberlot does not like low temperatures and ambient humidity very much, and yields can suffer significantly when these conditions are an issue.

Wolf Rogosky's team planting Caberlot back in 1986 (Source: Moritz Rogosky)

[Elle]: At the end, I think each grape variety, according to each region and, I would say, even each plot or sub-region, is harvested and treated differently by conscious winemakers because you don't have the same expression of the grapes, and the fermentation won't have the same dynamic and the fruit itself isn't exactly the same. 

What I would say is very characteristic of the Caberlot is that it is a very late-ripening grape variety. We really need to wait for it to have a balanced maturity as much on the phenolic aspects as just the aromatic expression and also the acidity.

But as for any grape, at the end, you have to listen to it and respect its rhythm, because you cannot impose a taste, you cannot impose a fermenting process. That's not our way of approaching it. So at the end it's just like listening to the grape.

[Moritz]: Yes, and some things will never change. We harvest by hand, of course, but we also sort by hand in the vineyard and not on sorting tables later in the cellar. The fruit is put into a refrigerated truck, so we cool it down. Very important, especially with these warm temperatures. We totally destem the fruit and our fermentations, I like to say, are as spontaneous as possible.

And that's pretty much the operating mode that we follow every vintage. Of course, we do have to adapt if we have to accelerate a harvest, if the weather is not stable. But usually, we take about three weeks to harvest our little bit less than six hectares. We take a lot of time because, as Elle said, we need to achieve the best possible ripeness in order to get those Caberlot grapes to then release their unique aromatics.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Caberlot is a curious creature: a vine that smells and tastes like Cabernet Franc yet grows like Merlot, loose-clustered, low in vigour, and found nowhere else on earth. You have described the wine as lean and energetic, with a savoury, herbal, peppery character and an acid and tannin backbone that drives it forward. The magnum format itself was chosen partly because it lets the wine mature slowly and majestically.

For readers who cellar seriously, could you map out how Caberlot actually evolves in bottle: Are there distinct phases? What is the wine like to drink at each of them, from a young release to a fully resolved example?

I understand your family still keeps a handful of the very first 1988 magnums, made largely from Bordini’s nursery rows and crushed by your mother’s feet. When you last tasted one, what was it like, and what did it tell you about how far this grape can travel?

[Moritz]: Elle’s a much better taster than me. She knows how to put what you feel into words and even into drawings. Elle started quite a while ago to sometimes visualise her tasting notes and the experiences, the tastes, and the sensations.

[Elle]: It's not really what changed, but how the approach to the wines is today, including the new vintage, for example, which is 2022, as much as tasting older vintages of Caberlot. Of course, it's a big travel through time. It's a travel to several sensations, several, let's say, families of aromatics if we want to be a bit academic.

But what is very important to us, I would say, is that the wine, even the youngest vintage of Caberlot, should be approachable in its youth, and the idea is not to craft a wine you then have to wait decades for before it finally opens itself. Even though it's a beautiful approach. But I think that isn't connected to the timing of nowadays. People actually don't have time to wait. They want something that is ready to be tasted.

Our idea is that you can drink a very young Caberlot and have a real pleasure from it with, of course, a wine that might show more tension, something that will require maybe a bit more air at the opening, but that will definitely provide you with a very interesting experience.

And then, if you have the time or the fortune to maybe find some older vintages, you will just start entering into what's to me the real identity of Caberlot, which is a mix between something ethereal and something very linked to the earth, earthy notes very much on the spices, but a freshness that most people would never expect from the oldest vintages.

I had the chance to taste the 1988 only once, and we tasted it blind with other people. Honestly, nobody gave more than fifteen years to the wine. And it was impressive because it had more than double that.

And this to me is part of the surprise, and the identity of Caberlot, also very much on a sensory level, is that it has this distinctive freshness even through time. And even though you'll get closer to those spices, it doesn't get richer, or I would say heavier, it just gets more precise, lighter, but more complex. And honestly, it's something special and I'm not saying that because it's our wines.

[Moritz]: People tasting our wines, especially young wines, often comment on the tannins, and they say, “oh, there are tannins”. There has to be tannins, our wines are crafted to age. They're raised in wood, so there is the presence of tannins.

I find them present, but they're well placed. They're positioned at the heart of the wine, so they're not the kind of tannins where you say, this wine is going to need a lot of time in order to break down all of that structure and those tannins and make it accessible. The tannins are usually, well, hopefully placed at the heart of the wine, and drive the wines forward and give them energy.

We do release Caberlot after about four years, so quite some time. For example, in Italy, wines tend to be drunk quite young upon release. On the other hand, in the UK, we were in London in November and February for consecutive tastings and events around our wines. We tasted back older vintages because in the UK, the British like to taste their wines with a bit of age, at least ten years. A lot of collectors, but also there's a definite taste for more mature wines in England.

It was a great opportunity for us to taste back our wines and also the Carnasciale second wines from ten- to fifteen-year-old vintages. A unique moment because we do hold back some wines. My parents used to keep twenty magnums of each vintage. Today, we try to keep between sixty and ninety magnums in order to be able to reach back into the archive from time to time.

“But as for any grape, at the end, you have to listen to it and respect its rhythm, because you cannot impose a taste, you cannot impose a fermenting process.”

–Elle on working with a late-ripening variety

[88 Bamboo]: We understand you have been working with a special fermentation tank designed by a food-and-wine scientist from Florence, built to capture the aromatic compounds that normally escape as gas during fermentation, turn them back into liquid, and let the winemaker taste what is otherwise lost; because Italian law forbids adding anything back to a fermenting wine, you are running the trials side by side, with and without. You have also put a small lot of the 2025 into neutral stainless steel rather than wood, and kept a few casks for a gentler second use. 

Out of curiosity, what has the recapture tank taught you about what a normal fermentation costs a wine like Caberlot? And more importantly, what is the team really chasing with these experiments? What, to your mind, would make a better Il Caberlot?

[Marco Maffei]: The tank allows for the recovery of aromas but also for a different evolution of the wine. In fact, we have always fermented with a closed cap. We have simply expanded this technique. The goal is to obtain wines with an evolution comparable to wines aged in wood but without actually using it, or at least to find the right balance between ageing in wood and steel.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale / Il Caberlot)

[88 Bamboo]: For all this experimenting and science, there is yet a very romantic counter-current idea of keeping certain things a mystery. When the Swiss geneticist José Vouillamoz offered to finally settle what Caberlot actually is, we understand that you chose not to send them. Alongside the impulse to chase every fugitive aroma to the last, there is a deliberate art to leaving certain things unexplained – almost like the way an artist or an author knows what to leave off the page. 

You mentioned carefully preparing vine cuttings for the lab, but then on the eve of sending it over, decided against it. It seems to speak to your family’s certainty of Caberlot’s identity, yet that must have been an almost philosophically complex moment for your family. Could you take us into the dining room where it all happened? Could you share with us what were the considerations for and against, and the final nail that called the decision against sending the cutting to the lab?

[Moritz]: I just remembered something. I actually met José Vouillamoz in London at one of the first editions of a wine fair called the RAW Wine Fair for natural wines, a different approach, an alternative approach to wines. And he was doing a tasting. I don't remember exactly the theme of the tasting, but we met just before he gave it, in front of a big audience. And he said, well, if you want, I'd be very happy to put one of your magnums of Caberlot in the tasting. So we must have hit the spot somewhere.

And I wasn't present for the tasting, so I don't know what kind of response the wine got and what exactly was the context. But we kept in touch.

And at one point, he reached out because he started following a little bit the story of the winery and also listening to the story that I was telling or that we were telling about the wines. Then he said, listen, if you do want to know… He was based in Switzerland and had a lab. He said, I regularly do DNA testing and profiling this and that. If you do want to know, I can tell you exactly what kind of material you would need to collect at what time of the year and send in. And then, it's a matter of a couple of weeks and I can give you the answer.

And he even said, oh, and I'd be happy to do it: I won't send you an invoice. You can just send me a few magnums of Caberlot and I'll be happy with that. And so the offer was there. If I think back, we sat down and talked about it.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale / Il Caberlot)

We were at the same time interested and even excited by the possibility of knowing exactly what we had, going beyond what Remigio Bordini had always been telling my family. My father saying that, yes, it was probably a natural spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, because that's what was growing in these vineyards up in the north. 

[Elle]: Honestly, I was not there when these kinds of decisions were made about knowing, or not knowing. At the beginning, I did not really understand why they didn't, why you chose not to know, and I thought, I don't know. I really had some trouble with it.

And slowly, I just realised that nowadays, there are very few things that we don't know because we can pretty much know everything about anything. And I was very happy you underlined the term romanticism. And I think there is definitely something quite romantic in this that I really feel totally connected with.

And I like the idea that we don't know everything because at the end, that's pretty much the essence of nature. We cannot control nature. And it's just finding your way of interacting with it. So I think what brings us and moves us forward is to try to interact together the best way possible.

And that's what we do in cultivating this grape, vinifying it and bottling it, ageing it, tasting it so much. And I think that at least for now we're quite fine with it. And I feel at the end it's very precious to keep this mystery.

[Moritz]: And again, it's a much better story to tell than if we said, 'Oh yeah, we sent it to the lab, and this is the DNA.' Much better story, as you've picked up.

[Elle]: But it's more matching our values as well.

[Moritz]: Exactly. Keeps us curious. If we knew, we'd maybe get a little bit less excited about planting a new vineyard.

“We never totally close our doors to curious winemakers who would make some trials. But it’s a tricky grape variety.”

–Elle on whether Caberlot could ever grow anywhere else

[88 Bamboo]: Wolf Rogosky’s original gamble was to plant a grape that had never been seen near Tuscany, and the estate has kept making that same bet. With Ottantadue, launched in 2016, you took the most Tuscan grape of all, Sangiovese, but deliberately refused to make a Chianti lookalike: whole-cluster in part, spontaneous fermentation in cement, fourteen months in steel rather than oak, a clear bottle, best served lightly chilled, in pursuit of what the estate calls an unconventionally pure and dynamic Sangiovese, grown inside the newly revived Valdarno di Sopra DOC, the first appellation anywhere made up entirely of certified-organic producers. And then came Blanc, a white built around Assyrtiko, the great grape of Santorini, grafted in 2019 and, because Assyrtiko may not officially be planted in Italy, declared on paper as Vernaccino, which is the very same paperwork sleight-of-hand that keeps Caberlot filed as Cabernet Franc.

What drew you to make Sangiovese and Assyrtiko on your own terms, and what does each allow the estate to express? Is there a single logic running from Caberlot to Blanc (perhaps a conviction about making a wine that hasn’t been seen anywhere else in the region)?

[Elle]: I think that's a point we underlined at the very beginning, that after so many years with the Caberlot, we wanted to reconnect with that Tuscan grape Sangiovese. It made us curious because we actually love that grape variety and I think it also allowed us to enrich our approach to the territory, to also work with the most local grape variety that was there.

Of course, not doing it the classical way because that's really not our style. Our take on that grape, our expression, our way of doing it. And honestly, it is a wine that is fermented in cement and aged in stainless steel without using any wood. Not because we don't like wood, but just because that's our approach.

Treating the Sangiovese that way was already something considered quite punkish. And that totally fits us. And slowly, starting with the 2015 vintage through to 2023, the last vintage we released, we really grew and learned a lot, not only about the Sangiovese but also about our plots. So that's something: by creating, we learn so much.

So I would say, for the Ottantadue, it enabled Moritz to design this absolutely sumptuous label. So that's back again this kind of fashion inspiration, creativity. That was a great opportunity.

And the white wine, of course, has nothing classical or local because it's a Greek grape variety that we partly planted, partly grafted. But that's also reflecting our open-mindedness, our histories, that there is still a lot of connection between several countries, several people, several encounters. Several tastings as well because we really love Assyrtiko wines. Moritz too. You have a special connection to Greece. I feel it's my favourite place on Earth. So it's about putting all these elements together and trying to create something interesting. That's the vision we had.

[Moritz]: I like to sometimes say that Sangiovese is the grape variety that my parents decided not to plant back in 1986 when they planted the vineyard, even though all around us Sangiovese was growing. It's not my revenge, but it's Sangiovese. It wasn't really part of the plan.

A hectare of Sangiovese entered the property in 2015 and we said, what do we do with it? Do we graft it into Caberlot? Oh, why not? Why don't we think about crafting a different wine, our take on the iconic grape variety? The idea also was to be able to produce a somewhat more accessible wine with a different production process.

The choice of the clear-glass, Burgundy-shaped bottle maybe steers this wine to a somewhat different audience. It's not a third wine. It's not Caberlot or Carnasciale. Ottantadue has nothing to do with Il Caberlot and Carnasciale Botte Grande; it's a wine on its own. It's our homage to Tuscany and the grape of Tuscany.

“It’s when a bottle of wine is much more than just a bottle of wine. When behind that bottle comes forward the story of a family, of a person, the way he expresses himself, the words he chooses to tell that story.”

–Moritz on why the story matters as much as the wine

[88 Bamboo]: For an estate this deliberately small, every decision to grow is a considered one, and there are signs of a new chapter taking shape. We understand you have recently taken on a further plot of long-farmed organic vineyard near Mercatale, parts of which are being grafted over to Caberlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Assyrtiko, Cabernet Franc, while some Sangiovese is kept, and that a new winery is on the drawing board, a cellar below and a tasting room above, set a little apart from the old family house.

The Caberlot grape is a singular variety grown nowhere else in the world. There are no nurseries it can be purchased from. Is the continuity of this grape varietal on your mind? Are there any special efforts taken to ensure that this varietal would persist into the future?

[Elle]: How to ensure the future of Caberlot? We never totally close our doors to curious winemakers who would make some trials. But it's a tricky grape variety. So I think the most natural and most spontaneous answer that I have is that we have to keep working. We have in our hands, let's say, the future of this grape variety.

Again, who knows? With climate change too, a lot of winemakers or wine regions in general are slowly shifting to new varieties. Opening up also, maybe, some rules, some more academic approach to something, again, more connected to reality.

Who knows if, in some years, someone will try to share this adventure with us. For now, to my knowledge, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody has ever shown a firm interest in farming it.

[Moritz]: There were some agronomical trials Bordini conducted back in the 1980s with some other wineries he was consulting for. To my knowledge, all of those vineyards have been pulled out because back in the 1980s and early 1990s, production was very low. The grapes were not ripening properly, not producing a lot of sugar, and not reaching the required alcohol levels. The farmers or grape growers said there is no future in this grape.

We would say we are the only small estate to believe firmly in this grape and today we have managed to bring it to its best possible product and situation so far.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Without getting ahead of anything you are not yet ready to announce, could you share about what these might mean for Il Carnasciale: what would the new land, and the new purpose-built cellar, let you achieve?

[Moritz]: The new land that you're referring to close to the Mercatale facility was actually an opportunity that came forward. Somebody reached out to us. The landowner said, listen, I have this land. I have 4.8 hectares of old and a little bit less old vineyards already certified organic for over twenty years, and he was selling.

This came at a good moment in time. This land is mainly Sangiovese, but we were also looking to continue grafting Caberlot, continue grafting Assyrtiko at different altitudes. This was an opportunity to seize.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

We're not going to work those close to five hectares immediately. We've pulled out some vines, we've grafted some. We're looking forward to this, but this plot will allow us to move forwards. With a good feeling, we have the land we need for the coming years.

And so the cellar, as you said, is still on the drawing board. We do hope to move forwards with this project, which has been on the drawing board for close to ten years. We do hope to move decisively forward before the end of the year. I like to think of it as the next big step that my father would have taken, were he still amongst us, because after thirty or so vintages, Caberlot does deserve a next big step.

There have been a lot of small big steps, but this is a major step with also the idea to bring everything under one roof, almost everything. We will keep the warehouses in the valley because the cellar will be positioned high up here close to the old farm, close to the original vineyard at 450 metres altitude.

But bringing a lot of things under one roof would also let us maybe develop visits, bringing people to the estate. We do it, but it's a little bit complicated with our current setup because it's a small house, it's a small farm. There's family everywhere, so it's not the most ideal place to welcome visitors.

And that is definitely something: if we want to continue to bring people close to the wine and the story of Il Carnasciale, we need to be able to develop and work a little bit more on so-called hospitality without going overboard. Making things a little bit more accessible makes sense in the future.

“If you enjoy it, drink it your way, but try to get connected to that little piece of the world.”

–Elle on how to drink

[88 Bamboo]: What does the wine world look like from the eyes of Il Carnasciale? And what would you like it to look like into the future?

[Elle]: Honestly, I think it's keep working, keep being open-minded, keep being very stimulated by quality and precision. As Moritz also said at the very beginning, about the thing you wanted to share with the next generation: keep being optimistic.

Because honestly, there are too many elements that would also make you say, okay, I'm done with it. It's too complicated. It's true, it's very complicated, but how much it gives us back, how much positivity, and wow, it's so precious, the time, the energy we put in on an individual level with people.

Not a lot of products are able to create such moments as wine does, and especially very good wines, unique wines with a story behind them. So I think we are shaping the future every day and I think we share positivity, optimism. That's something I would not even add more to, because anything can happen. We know it, but we'll do everything to follow our track.

(Source: Podere Il Carnasciale)

[Moritz]: Exactly as you say, there's so much going on out there in the so-called wine world. And not only the wine world, the world around us, a lot of conflict, a lot of issues, and we are somewhat blessed to have Il Carnasciale high up on the hill.

It's a place that feels very safe because we're synchronised with nature. We're not far removed, we're high up, but we're close to everything. But again, it feels very safe with all that's going on out there and more specifically in the wine world.

We work with thirty countries, so we have partners and clients and importers in thirty countries. And of course, we get a lot of news from all of those markets. There is definitely a lot going on, some of it good, some of it more complicated, in the world of wine, health issues, consumption, consumer trends, this and that.

We're fortunate; we're in a very small niche with our wines Caberlot and Carnasciale. Those wines are iconic to some and completely unknown to many. And with our small production of about 20,000 bottles per vintage, all three wines put together, there are still a lot of opportunities out there.

And more than ever, I think we need to accompany our wines with our person, with our story, with our words. Be close to the wines, because that is also what I see making the difference today. And we see that as we travel.

It's when a bottle of wine is much more than just a bottle of wine. When behind that bottle comes forward the story of a family, of a person, the way he expresses himself, the words he chooses to tell that story. And that's something that definitely finds an echo with people and draws them towards one wine more than maybe towards another wine. That's something we need to work on, and to constantly remind ourselves that we, as people, are almost as important as what's in the bottle and what's on the label.

 

[88 Bamboo]: Wolf Rogosky set all of this in motion with an adman’s nerve and an outsider’s freedom. Today the craft continues to be shaped by others who stayed close: his wife, Bettina, the oenologist Vittorio Fiore, the agronomist Remigio Bordini who found the vine, and Peter Schilling. Moritz – you also had the benefit of being schooled somewhere else entirely, in the ateliers of Paris couture, long before you came home to the hill.

Drawing on any of your experiences, what is the single best piece of advice, or the one idea, that still guides how you work and live, and where did it come from?

[Moritz]: Good question. I'm not really one to give advice because I often don't really know where I stand with certain things, or how I see or position myself with certain things.

Honestly and sincerely and simply, my best piece of advice to anyone, and this is more maybe steered to a younger generation, is languages. Learn as many languages as possible.

I have an accent in every language. I was born in Germany. We left Germany when I was eight, almost nine years old, and we moved to New York City, where I had to learn American English and New York English. We left again when I was fifteen, almost sixteen, and we moved to France. I did not speak French at the time, and a little bit after that started spending more time here in Italy and Tuscany. So in Italian too. I have an accent in every language.

I would say that thanks to my parents, I was moved around a lot and had to learn new languages all the time. It wasn't always easy, not at all. It was even very difficult sometimes.

But today, to have this kind of fortune, these keys which languages represent and the access they give. Meeting with people, talking with people. But also the natural curiosity of reading newspapers, listening to radio, TV, whatever, in a different language is something that stimulates the mind. It definitely, I think, participates in the construction of a personality.

My best piece of advice. And I would also say that because often around Europe, people are not so comfortable with foreign languages. But I've just seen that the more languages you have at your disposal, the more it opens up the world.

(Source: Carla-Elle Rogosky / Champagne Tarlant)

[Elle]: My advice is just to preserve the curiosity to taste wine and to drink wine because there are several trends around alcohol consumption, and I think that is very important. It's definitely to be taken into account. But it shouldn't tip into something too radical, where anything that contains alcohol is bad.

Wine is not just alcohol, as we said. It's a vision, it's a story, it's a natural product. It's something beautiful. It's crafting something special.

And my advice is, also for the younger generation: taste wine. If you enjoy it, drink it your way, but try to get connected to that little piece of the world because it's an amazing, amazing experience that can provide a lot of satisfaction.

(Source: Moritz Rogosky)

[88 Bamboo]: This has been such a great pleasure to speak with you, Moritz, Elle and Marco! We really appreciate you sharing your time and passion with us!

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@CharsiuCharlie