WINE & SPIRITS

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Guests can spend a week on the property, roaming the vineyards, taking cooking classes from the family's longtime personal chef and spending the night in a Renaissance villa perched on a hill among the vines.

If Capezzana recalls Renaissance Tuscany, Castello di Monsanto, 15 miles west of Florence, is the modern fantasy of a Tuscan estate. (Before wine, the Monsanto family made its name and fortune in fabric, a business it remains in today.) The property's lush manicured gardens are dotted with sculpture and bordered by towering cypress trees. Beyond the main property, where the Monsanto family lives, lie acre upon acre of hillside vineyards punctuated by crumbling villas soon to be renovated into full-service guest houses. Framed by Etruscan archways, the winery's extraordinary mood-lit barrel cellar extends 800 feet in a straight line. The cellar leads into the tasting room, which overlooks a gorgeous green lawn large enough to accommodate a hot air balloon (which it occasionally does). Supervision of its olive oil and Chianti Classico wine production are in the hands of second generation Laura Bianchi, an Italian beauty with striking blonde hair.

At the end of my trip, I sat with the lithe scion of the Monsanto winery, sipping Chianti Classico from the esteemed Il Poggio vineyards. A light lunch spread had been laid out. I drank; I ate; I basked in the moment. A disconnect began to take shape. Was there really a line to be drawn from the caricature straw-covered, wide-bottomed bottles of my youth to the luxe life that Chianti clearly embodies today?