Cantine De' Ricci - Cattedrale del Vino

Beneath Palazzo Ricci, stone staircases descend into vaulted halls whose pillars and arches earned the nickname "Cathedral of Wine". The Ricci family's winemaking at this site is documented from 1337.

Why it matters

Montepulciano's wine heritage lives underground, and De' Ricci is its most theatrical address. The estate's own account traces the family's winemaking at this site to 1337, with roots it pushes back to an ancestor recorded around 1150 — which makes these cellars among the oldest continuously documented wine addresses in the Valdichiana. The monumental rooms justify the nickname: three naves defined by enormous pillars, vaults and arches, arranged so that the space reads like a sacred building. The winery states plainly that the structure resembles a temple and treats it as such — a sanctuary for wine, where about half of the estate's bottles still mature. The cellars' stable temperature and humidity historically suited the Ricci family's barrels and continue to support wine maturation.

What to notice

An equestrian staircase connects Palazzo Ricci with the cellars; it was designed so riders could reach the cellar floors without dismounting. The vaulted naves contain lines of barrels and bottles beneath brick vaults supported by massive pillars. The cellars reach Montepulciano's first city wall and the calcareous outcrop known as the Rupe del Sasso. A brick tunnel leads to a tufa grotto that the estate associates with the family's origins.

Context and history

The Ricci were one of Montepulciano's leading families, and their palace on Via Ricci — attributed by local tradition to Baldassarre Peruzzi — still curves with the street in the Sienese manner. Wine production under the family's name at this address is documented to 1337, a date the estate has adopted as its foundation; the deeper genealogy around 1150 belongs to the family's own account. As Vino Nobile grew into the town's signature wine — the red that a seventeenth-century poet famously crowned king of Tuscan wines, and which the wine-route institution recalls as the first Italian red awarded DOCG status — the monumental cellars kept their role, maturing wine at constant temperature without artificial help. The estate's wine production connects the historic cellars with the surrounding territory.