What piqued my curiosity about Villa Mangiacane—even before I organized this visit—wasn’t just the winemaking project. There was one aspect that fits perfectly with our concept of storytelling: the dialogue between wine, history, and art.

I was greeted by Cosimo Valenti, the estate’s winery manager. The tour began in the cellar, where he gave me an overview of the wines produced at Villa Mangiacane and told me about the winery’s winemaking journey. We then moved to the tasting room, where, among the bottles,

one immediately catches my eye. It’s called “Malchiodo.”

It’s not just the name that intrigues me, but also the label. In recent months, I’ve been working on the naming and label design for a line of wines at another winery. This work has made me realize just how much every graphic choice, every name, and every detail can tell a story. 

So the first question I ask Cosimo is simple.

“Why is it called Malchiodo?”

He explains that the name stems from the history of the Machiavelli family.

One interpretation of the surname’s origin refers to the Latin *malus clavellus*, meaning “bad nail,” which also echoes the four nails featured in the family’s historic coat of arms. This is how Malchiodo took shape—a project that links the wine to the villa’s identity and to the memory of those who once lived there.

The label follows the same logic. It wasn’t commissioned from a design firm but was created by a group of students involved in the project. This choice reflects the relationship the estate has built over the years with the art world, including through the Mangiacane Art Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting cultural heritage. The goal was not to create a commercial image, but to offer a free interpretation of the wine and its history.

The story, however, does not end with the name and the label.

With the 2025 vintage, Malchiodo becomes a 100% Canaiolo, a choice aimed at highlighting a historic Tuscan grape variety, often found in blends but rarely as the star of the show. It is an idea born from the desire to explore its expressive potential without the support of other varieties. “What I appreciate about Canaiolo is its elegance, its floral notes, its red fruit, and a gentler tannic structure,” says Cosimo. “When vinified as a single-varietal wine, it expresses a fresh, immediate, and contemporary character.” 

The same philosophy also guides the choice of the cocciopesto amphora. Not to follow a trend, but to age the wine in the most respectful way possible. Natural micro-oxygenation, in fact, preserves the fruit and the grape variety’s identity without the aromatic influence of other materials.

Cosimo offers me a taste, though he warns me that it was bottled very recently. I accept with curiosity. The recent bottling is evident on the palate. It’s still in a settling-in phase, with all the characteristics of a wine that needs to find its balance. Despite this, the direction of the project is already apparent:

a Canaiolo that emphasizes elegance and freshness over structure, allowing the fruit and floral notes to shine.

It will be interesting to taste it again in a few months, once it has completed its evolution. After the tasting, the tour continues inside the villa. It is here that I spot the Machiavelli coat of arms with the four nails we had discussed just moments earlier. A detail that, seen after learning about the Malchiodo project, inevitably takes on a different meaning. The wine doesn’t simply take its name from a historical symbol—it seeks to transform it into a contemporary narrative. 

Reflecting on the day, I believe this is precisely the most interesting aspect of the project. In a place where history is one of the strongest elements of the narrative, Villa Mangiacane’s Chianti Classico wines represent continuity with a well-established tradition. Malchiodo, on the other hand, chooses to explore another possibility, reviving a grape variety that has often remained in the background and building an identity around it that is deeply rooted in the history of the place. It is not an exercise in style, nor is it a quest for novelty at all costs.

It is an attempt to demonstrate that a region can continue to tell its story through different languages, without losing its connection to its roots.

And perhaps this is precisely the aftertaste I take away from Villa Mangiacane: the realization that, sometimes, the most interesting stories do not arise from what is most obvious, but from a detail that someone has chosen to observe with a different kind of attention.