Seventy Hectares Under Measurement
Nature is the primary protagonist. Seventy hectares beside the Val d’Orcia, sixteen of them handed back to the wild and counted season by season.
We gave that measurement a name. Nature Asset Value records what this land holds in living terms, and follows the figure year on year.
Nature keeps the score.
Farming begins beneath the surface. Under every field lies a network of fungal thread that moves water and minerals between plants which never touch each other. One afternoon with a plough destroys that network. Rebuilding takes years.
When the soil improves, the crop follows. The density in a tomato and the depth in an oil are decided by what is alive underneath, long before harvest.
Sixteen hectares are out of production for good. We undid what the old farming left behind, and since then our only work has been to measure what returns.
Left alone, those sixteen hectares are already deciding what belongs. The rewilding zone is the baseline everything else at Agaporia answers to.
We stopped, and watched.
The olive grove is a century old, and has come through drought, frost, war and many changes of ownership.
Everything planted has to survive whatever the climate becomes. The indigenous species and old local varieties we choose have already proved they can live on this soil, in this rainfall, through this heat.
A hillside that can take the next hundred years.
Two hectares of permaculture at the centre of the estate, one minute from the kitchen door.
Picked at eight, cooked at nine, served on the terrace directly above the beds it came from. What the kitchen cannot use goes into the compost and back into the same ground.
Stand in the middle and the whole circle is around you.
We think underground is where a cantina belongs. With very little help from us, the ground gives a steady temperature, the humidity a cork needs, and the shelter from daylight a bottle ages in.
Zabella will be the estate’s enoteca, set into the hillside beside the cantina. Your tasting can begin where the wine was made.
Alongside our own future vintages, the cellar will hold small growers from inside the Short Circuit. Every one of them known to us personally, certified biodynamic or making natural wine at a level that inspires us.
The Conscious Club™ is where you become part of our restoration mandate. Your stay carries that commitment beyond the estate, towards a world where Nature has standing. Your room rate already holds the sum.
A fixed four percent of room revenue goes to the restoration of land, ocean and human life, committed before you arrive and recorded after you leave.