Two decades ago, when we first began renting cars and driving down the country back roads of Tuscany, our company’s name said it all: Small Vineyards. Inspired by all the true blue, soil-to-bottle winemakers Europe had to offer, we played detective, seeking out the best, undiscovered producers in Italy. Today, we proudly use that same name to represent our portfolio of indigenous wines with a unique, small-batch story to share. For estates with their own labels, the Small Vineyards Gold Seal identifies bottles we’ve certified as low-yield, hand-harvested, earth-friendly, artisanal, and created by a family operated farm. Now, with our new Platinum Seal, we’re taking the brand a step further, sourcing premium wines from independent growers with a fantastic cost-to-quality ratio and espousing those same basic tenets.

As anyone who knows us knows, the spirit behind each Small Vineyards bottle remains just as important as the technical details. We look for farmers with a multi-generational reverence for the land – folks who don’t irrigate and would rather forego an entire vintage “rather than use man-made pesticides in our grandchildren’s soil.” Likewise, we partner with producers whose natural instincts lead them to low yields - ten times lower than those of a corporation, in fact, averaging just 1-1 ½ bottles per plant! To achieve this, vines are often grown low to the ground and pruned so they only have 5-6 clusters. Needless to say, green grapes and overripe fruit never make it past the sorting table - just the estate’s crème de la crème fruit, always audited by hand. In the end, you can taste the results in every Small Vineyards glass: concentration, complexity, and a sense of terroir that in other circumstances would cost twice the price. Quality over quantity in all things – it’s why we began seeking out small estates 20 years ago, and why this ethos remains at the core of our company today.