For centuries, farmers in the little valley in Tuscany surrounding my family’s ancestral village of Farneta, Italy, delivered their grapes to La Chertosa™, the magnificent Renaissance monastery founded in 1338. Within its frescoed-halls and moss-covered caves, generations of Certosinian monks transformed the humble, peasant fruit into wine.
These same farmers who tended the vineyards and grain fields adjacent to the monastery also assisted the friars in their winemaking, learning the time-honored techniques of their craft. Samuele, my nonno, was among these assistants and as his abilities grew, he dreamed of one day owning his own winery.
The cemetery and courtyard of
La Chertosa di Farneta
La Chertosa Wines are a tribute to the bold, sincere, generous and warm-hearted pioneer of my family’s American adventure. A man who had the courage at 21 years old to depart from the sanctity of family, monastery shadows, and the familiar soil where he learned his art. He became a founding father, not only of the California wine industry, but of the new town of Sonoma.
In 1981, on my first, of what have now become over 15 visits to La Chertosa di Farneta, I met Father Paul or Fra Paolo. Fra Paolo is a winemaker and master blender. He kindly volunteered to show me where my nonno first learned to make wine.
Fra Paolo or Father Paul
It was amazing; I had the good fortune of retracing my Nonno’s steps. Curtains of damp, clingy, cobwebs slowed our descent into the abandoned, musty monastery cellar. There before me stood a wine press, oval tanks and barrels – the decayed implements of Samuele’s 1880’s winemaking-cellar-classroom. I was filled with reverence for those items once used to teach my family’s patriarch his winemaking art.
Samuele’s vision, persistence and foresight are commemorated in current and future vintages of La Chertosa Wines.
Ancient barrel in the
cellar at La Chertosa
Our labels pay homage to the Sebastiani’s family’s legacy. The Cross of the Knights of Malta – known as The Maltese Cross – was long ago chiseled into the altar of Chiesa San Lorenzo, the parish church near La Chertosa, where generations of my forbearers worshipped.
Out of respect for them, I have embraced The Maltese Cross on my wine labels. It further serves as a reminder that our lives and fortunes are determined and guided by a glorious Lord.
Its eight points denote the eight obligations or aspirations of the knights, namely ‘to live in truth, have faith, repent one’s sins, give proof of humility, love justice, be merciful, be sincere and wholehearted, and to endure persecution.’
Chiesa San Lorenzo
La Chertosa’s prize-winning wines maintain high standards and are part of a tradition of wine-making that perseveres in changing times the patience and ideals of the past.
Please enjoy these wines as a tribute to the winemaking heritage that has carried my family through several centuries in Italy and over one hundred and twenty-five years here in the Sonoma Valley.
Grazie e saluti!
Sam Sebastiani
Sam and Robin Sebastiani visiting
La Chertosa di Farneta