In 1985, Ferruccio Ferragamo went looking for game in the hills between Florence and Arezzo. He came home having found a thousand-year-old medieval village instead.

Years later, his son Salvatore rode a bicycle into those same hills and saw something his father hadn't: a valley whose soil told an entirely different story in every direction, sandstone in one corner, clay rich with sea fossils in another, the memory of an ocean that vanished millions of years before anyone planted a vine.

This is the story of Il Borro — a family better known for shoes than soil, who spent three decades turning a ruin into one of Tuscany's most decorated organic estates, and who are now writing a second chapter in Montalcino.

Salvatore Ferragamo, Vice President of Il Borro, sits down with Pierre Ferland to talk about the Valdarno di Sopra, an appellation the estate helped bring back from obscurity, the single vineyard behind Alessandro dal Borro, named for a Medici military commander built on an unusually large scale, the horses that plough Nitrito instead of tractors, and Petruna, a return to ancient amphora winemaking that strips Sangiovese back to something almost nothing else in Tuscany attempts.

And at the very end, Salvatore says something about Pinino, the family's newer estate in Montalcino, that he didn't have to admit. But did anyway.

The bonus episode, where Salvatore goes into the years before certification, the business case behind the vineyard's solar fields, and what actually earns a second bottle of wine, is available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.

Featuring: Il Borro, Valdarno di Sopra DOC, Tuscany, Italy, Sangiovese, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Chardonnay, Pinino, Montalcino, Brunello di Montalcino.

Sara Lecompte Cuvelier swore she would never work in wine. Then in 2018, she became Managing Director of one of the five Second Grand Cru Classé estates in Saint-Julien. Her sister Anne had already been there for thirteen years, building something from nothing. That is the story of Château Léoville Poyferré — and neither of them planned any of it.

In this episode of Read Between the Wines, Pierre Ferland sits down with Sara and Anne Cuvelier at Château Léoville Poyferré in Saint-Julien, Bordeaux, France, for the first of a two-part conversation. The Cuvelier family has been in wine since 1804, beginning as négociants near Lille in the north of France, acquiring Léoville Poyferré in 1920, and extending the family story all the way to the foot of the Andes in Mendoza with Cuvelier Los Andes in 2003.

The conversation covers what it means to inherit something you did not build. The demi-wolf on the label that belonged to the Lawton family and was kept without question. The family motto borrowed from Le Petit Prince: the essential is invisible to the eye. Anne building wine tourism at a classified growth estate before Bordeaux believed that was possible. Sara arriving with a background in human resources and discovering it was exactly what the job required.

And the word Sara says you need to remember about this estate. Not prestige. Not history. Precision.

Part two, where Sara and Anne go deep into the vineyard, the wines, and what Bordeaux still needs to say out loud, is available exclusively at readbetweenthewines.com.

Featuring: Château Léoville Poyferré, Saint-Julien, Médoc, Bordeaux, France, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Second Grand Cru Classé.

In 1935, a viceroy ordered a vineyard planted in the hills between Florence and Arezzo. Not to make wine. To mark a military conquest.

Ninety years later, that same vineyard is producing one of the most celebrated Sangiovese in all of Tuscany.

This is the story of Tenuta Sette Ponti — an estate that began as a hunting retreat, became a family obsession, and is now home to Oreno, a wine that has gone toe to toe with the great Bordeaux blends of France. Blind. And won.

Alberto Moretti Cuseri, third generation of the Moretti Cuseri family and Export Director of the estate, sits down with Pierre Ferland to talk about the Valdarno di Sopra, one of Italy's oldest wine zones, certified fully organic and still largely unknown outside serious wine circles. The conversation covers the Vigna dell'Impero and its 90-year-old vines, the portfolio from Crognolo to Oreno, a pure Merlot called Sette, and a Trebbiano that makes a quiet argument for one of Italy's most underrated white grapes.

And at the very end, Alberto says something about wine and identity that lands differently than anything else in this conversation.

Featuring: Tenuta Sette Ponti, Valdarno di Sopra, Oreno, Crognolo, Vigna dell'Impero, Tuscany wine, Super Tuscan, Sangiovese, Italian wine podcast, Alberto Moretti Cuseri