Gaiole in Chianti discovery guide

Because the recipe for Chianti Classico was written in a castle eight kilometres from this square.

Bettino Ricasoli ran Brolio from 1829 and, in 1874, after years of trials with Pinot, Cabernet, Grenache and Carignano, settled on the Sangiovese blend that the modern production rules still follow. He was also mayor of Gaiole for many years. Thirteen castles stand in this comune, linked by a Strada dei Castelli.

The friction is that the town itself is a street. Gaiole was never a stronghold — it is the valley-floor market the castles came down to, and its heart is still via Ricasoli, a street-square rather than a piazza. Twenty minutes covers it.

The smart way is to treat Gaiole as a base and drive the castles. Brolio for the wine and the gardens, Coltibuono for an abbey founded in 1049, Meleto for a tiny eighteenth-century theatre, Vertine for an intact walled borgo. Or come on the first Sunday in October and ride.

The first Sunday in October is the one fixed date. L'Eroica is held then, and it fills the comune: the ride winds over the white roads of the Sienese Chianti, the Crete Senesi and the Val d'Orcia, with antique bicycles, riders in vintage clothing, vintage cars and motorbikes, wine, capocollo and pecorino. Book accommodation months ahead or avoid the weekend entirely.

Spring and early autumn are the sensible seasons. The comune runs from 215 to 839 metres and most of what there is to do involves driving or riding between them.

Harvest from late August changes the roads. This is a comune whose principal wealth is enogastronomic tourism built on working estates; in September the tractors have priority.

No temperature figures are quoted on this page. The nearest long-run station is at Montevarchi, down in the Valdarno and separated from Gaiole by a ridge, and the record that carries those figures withdraws them as unrepresentative. Rather than repeat numbers measured in another valley, treat Gaiole as upland Chianti: hot dry summers, cold winters, long usable shoulders.

Walk via Ricasoli, and understand what it is

For centuries the heart of Gaiole has been the street-square of via Ricasoli — a place of trading and daily life rather than a monumental piazza. The comune itself is at number 5. The parish church, San Sigismondo, is a neo-Gothic building faced in pietra serena except for its facade.

Then take the Strada dei Castelli

The Castle Road winds through the hills and takes in the fortification of the Chianti in the Middle Ages. Cacchiano was built in the thirteenth century by the Ricasoli, destroyed by the Aragonese in 1478 and rebuilt in 1530. Monteluco, near the Massellone, has two nuclei — a lower outpost with a mighty stone tower and a summit complex entered through an elegant arch — with the great tower of Tornano across the river.

Brolio for the wine, and for the argument about it

Eight kilometres south, the Ricasoli castle: a pentagon of walls with an eleventh-century cassero base, a nineteenth-century English manor grafted on in brick, a sixteenth-century Italian garden and a romantic park with firs now 30 to 40 metres tall. The 1874 blend was worked out here.

Coltibuono for the oldest thing in the comune

An abbey founded in 1049, Vallombrosan by 1115, suppressed by Napoleon in 1810 and sold — and then, in 1816, raffled in a lottery by an owner fleeing his creditors. Its bell tower was begun in 1160.

And Meleto for the theatre

Two kilometres before Gaiole, a castle with two cylindrical bastioned towers of the 1480s and, inside, an eighteenth-century teatrino keeping seven original stage sets.

Gaiole's identity is commercial, and it is older than the castles' tourism. Its history is strictly tied to its position as a road junction in communications between the Chianti and the upper Valdarno, and that is what made it the market of the neighbouring castles. The market is cited in notarial acts from 1215 and was still an important event for the area in the eighteenth century, as Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo recorded after visiting in July 1773.

Its arms are three pines. Granted by decree of the President of the Republic on 2 October 1995: azure, three Italian pines of green, the central pine taller with its crown above the others. Radda has three elms; Gaiole has three pines.

It changed province within living memory of the state. Until the early nineteenth century Gaiole belonged administratively to the province of Florence; in the Napoleonic period, under the Kingdom of Etruria, it was placed in the Sienese Department and in the province of Siena, where it remains.

Like Radda, it did not want to be Italian. At the 1860 plebiscite on the annexation of Tuscany to the Kingdom of Sardinia, the "yes" votes did not obtain the majority of those entitled, with record abstention — read as a symptom of opposition to annexation.

And a twentieth-century grave matters here. The comune cemetery holds the tomb of Carla Lonzi, art historian and critic, philosopher, and founder in 1970 of Rivolta Femminile.

Almost everything worth seeing here is private property that lets people in. Brolio, Coltibuono and Meleto are working wine estates with houses, cellars and families attached; the castles on the Strada dei Castelli are mostly not open at all. Book where booking is offered, and do not drive up to a castle gate on spec.

The comune is large and nearly empty. 128.99 square kilometres, 2,454 residents, and frazioni of four, ten, twelve and twenty-six people. A coach party is a significant event in a hamlet this size.

Wine tourism is the economy, and it is recent. After the Second World War the countryside emptied; from the late 1970s the former farmhouses were progressively restored as agriturismi, and enogastronomic tourism is now the principal source of wealth for the territory. What a visitor spends here is not incidental.

The white roads are the landscape. The strade bianche that the Eroica made famous are unsurfaced working roads through vineyards and woods. Drive them slowly, give way to bicycles, and do not treat them as a rally stage.

The town costs nothing and the estates cost what they choose. Via Ricasoli, the church of San Sigismondo and the Strada dei Castelli are free to walk and drive; the castles along it are businesses, and most are not open at all.

Badia a Coltibuono sells access to itself. The estate runs a wine resort in rooms made in the monks' ancient cells, a restaurant, organic wine and oil, and a published list of experiences: a guided discovery of the former abbey with a tasting of its organic products, cookery courses, and walks and excursions on the Chianti paths. Its telephone is +39 0577 74481 int. 250.

Castello di Meleto is a wine resort too. It presents itself as having welcomed visitors at Gaiole since 1256, farming organically, with a bee park and a wine club.

No admission price is quoted anywhere on this page. Neither estate publishes one on the pages read for it, and the comune publishes no hours or charges for any castle in its territory. Assume a castle visit is a booked, priced experience and confirm before you drive out.

The real cost is the car. The comune has no railway station and the attractions are spread across it; the municipal switchboard is 0577 744711 and there is a freephone line on 800 012661.