Velette

Ancient origins

The estate preserves traces of a roughly 3,000-year relationship between people, vines and wine. In the Etruscan period, volcanic ground was excavated to create deep cellars whose naturally stable temperatures suited the fermentation and storage of white wine. These underground spaces remained the principal technical resource until roughly 70 years before the estate’s historical account was written, when modern technology began progressively supplementing them. Many ancient cellars are still used for maturation.

Roman rule brought a period of neglect after the Etruscans were defeated and displaced. Surviving evidence includes paved roads, walls made with Roman construction techniques and cippi, or milestones, along routes across the property. An early building, possibly a watchtower, may have occupied the site of the present villa.

Noble ownership and the Jesuit period

During the Middle Ages and the subsequent period, the land belonged to noble families who administered their rural holdings from nearby towns and villages. Around the end of the 17th century, the principal building was converted into a country residence and an adjoining church was constructed. The church is recorded on the 1766 Tiroli Land Registry map.

The property passed to the Negroni counts. In 1815 they donated it to the Jesuits when a member of the family entered the order. The complex was enlarged during the Jesuit period through the addition of two lateral wings and adjacent outbuildings. In the mid-19th century, Jesuit possessions were expropriated and transferred to the City of Orvieto, which retained the estate for several decades.

1877: the family estate begins

In 1877, the City of Orvieto sold Tenuta Le Velette at public auction to the brothers Sante and Luigi Felici. The estate has remained within the same extended family line ever since, passing successively through the Felici, Muzi and Bottai families. The new owners restored the villa, transformed it into an elegant summer residence and designed and created its garden.

Between 1880 and 1883, Luigi Felici commissioned the Marche painter Mariano Piervittori to fresco rooms in the villa and part of the chapel. The estate’s oldest cited wine-related recognition followed in 1884, when a red wine described as “fine” received a bronze medal at an event in Rome.

The first half of the 20th century

Two successive generations experienced tragic, high-impact events that left them with limited capacity to develop the property during the first half of the century.

Marcello Bottai and agricultural reorganization

A new phase began when Marcello Bottai, a Florentine agronomist, entered the family and initiated an agricultural and viticultural transformation. During the 1950s, consolidated vineyards began replacing isolated vine rows. The tenant-farm and separate-holding structure was abandoned in favor of unified management better suited to planning and executing substantial investment. The estate also participated actively in the foundation of the 1958 Consortium, the predecessor of the present protection consortium.

Modern cellars and wider markets

Modern cellars were completed in 1967. They made it possible to vinify the output of the new vineyards, bottle the wines and ship them to increasingly distant markets. Subsequent work has combined the continued use of ancient underground maturation spaces with technical development, viticultural and enological research, and the preservation of the estate as a functioning agricultural landscape.

Since 2018, Tenuta Le Velette has collaborated with the Milan organization Deafal to introduce organic and regenerative agriculture. The techniques are applied across about 20 hectares of vineyards and fields. The approach is intended to maximize farm and local resources and to make restoration of soil fertility a foundation of quality and productivity.

Cover crops and green manure are being introduced to add organic matter and improve soil structure. A roller-crimper allows the cover crop to be incorporated without tilling the soil. Fermented strengthening preparations made on the farm are used to nourish the vineyards, while wood chips and winery residues are converted into compost for the vines.

Vineyard management aims to maintain a balance between soil and plant. Winter work keeps dormant vines in productive equilibrium, while spring operations support the plants through both favorable and difficult seasons. Harvest timing is treated as the culmination of decisions involving soil, vine, climate and human judgment. Harvesting is manual in every detailed vineyard example, and one aromatic variety is picked in the cool early hours of the morning.

Vineyard renewal is planned around an approximately 30-year cycle. As old vines are removed, annual crops occupy the land during soil-regeneration periods before future replanting. Annual crops are also grown in positions unsuitable for vines, helping preserve agricultural diversity and landscape balance. Selected red-wine blocks receive yield control through substantial pruning and selective thinning.

The estate combines underground maturation spaces of ancient origin with modern production facilities. Deep cellars excavated into volcanic tuff provide naturally cool, stable conditions; many remain in use, including caves that may originally have been tombs and now accommodate wine maturing in small oak barrels. These underground conditions were the estate’s principal technical resource until modern systems progressively supplemented them.

A modern cellar built in 1967 enabled fruit from the reorganized vineyards to be vinified, bottled and sent to wider markets. Across the estate’s production, technical decisions are adjusted to the character of the fruit and the intended result. The documented equipment and vessels include traditional cement tanks, stainless-steel tanks, oak barrels, oak casks and small oak barrels. Practices represented across production include low-temperature fermentation, selected-yeast inoculation, controlled-temperature stainless-steel fermentation, fermentation in oak without temperature control, processing in an inert environment to preserve aromatic compounds, skin contact, malolactic fermentation, maturation on lees, natural clarification, filtration to retain residual sweetness, and maturation in oak followed by further rest in cement.

The guiding production objective is not uniformity but a wine with personality and a clearly recognizable imprint of its vintage. Times, temperatures, vessels and tests are therefore treated as decisions made anew as each wine develops.