In Valdichiana, Tuscany’s Capital of Culture 2025, just a stone’s throw from Montepulciano, pearl of the Renaissance, in an extraordinary landscape setting, a natural oasis among vineyards as far as the eye can see, oak forests and olive groves, The Wine Machines Museum, Carpineto’s corporate museum, was inaugurated on May 17, with the cutting of an unusual and symbolic ribbon made from a vine shoot.
THE WINE MACHINES, the collection of the CARPINETO Grandi Vini di Toscana, a company listed in the National Register of Historical Trademarks, was conceived and brought together by the co-founder of the Tuscan company among the best-known names in Italian wine, Antonio Mario Zaccheo, who has gathered here testimonies preserved, searched for and collected over the years, emblematic of an entire life dedicated to agriculture and wine in particular. From the museum to the vineyard and vice versa, wine is told.
Alessandro Ricceri’s comment
“THE MACHINES OF WINE is a unique private collection that recounts the history and evolution of machines for producing and preserving wine and, through them, the reality of two families who have dedicated themselves with passion to this land. We are happy that it is the first business museum to join the network of Fondazione Musei Senesi and we welcome it precisely because of its ability to tell a story that starts from the territory, the community that inhabits it and the typical production activities. This entry once again confirms how FMS is a network open to welcoming those significant realities that want to tell and enhance the tangible and intangible heritage of the lands of Siena and its communities”- stresses Alessandro Ricceri, president of Fondazione Musei Senesi.
Antonio Zaccheo
“I am honored that this collection of mine has become part of the Foundation and very happy to make a small contribution to a region that among its most precious assets includes a very prestigious wine production,” says Antonio Mario Zaccheo, who is also keen to emphasize the non-exhaustive and developing nature of this collection, which will continue to be enriched with new pieces.
“LE MACCHINE DEL VINO is located in the original site of the collection and production and represents not only a document of the history and tradition of a valuable craftsmanship such as that of the winemaker, but is also an expression of its continuity between past and present and the changes, and above all of our deep connection with the territory,” continues Zaccheo , who wanted to ideally represent here the beginning and the end of the production process, from the vineyard to the bottle.
The large collection
In fact, the collection brings together machines, tools, objects, documents, photographs, and texts that offer a glimpse of the evolution of winemaking machines from the very first wineries through the ferment of the 1960s to the turning point of the 1980s: beginning with work in the vineyard, then in the cellar, and ending with customs at the table via trade and commerce.
All seen through the eyes, passion, and knowledge of a man who began as a child (alongside his grandfather and then his father who were already winemakers) to make wine, continued with his friend and partner Giovanni Carlo Sacchet with whom in 1967 he founded the Tuscan winery that has become over the years one of Italy’s outstanding wine producers, and still continues to do so today. A man whose life sums up more than 60 years of wine history, from pioneering beginnings to the prestige of today.
The collection has a total of more than 180 items including wine-making machines and working objects. Added to this is a small personal library with volumes, magazines, guidebooks and vintage photographs.
The details of the wine machines
Coming in more detail to some mini exhibition sections: there is the viticulture section with even horseshoes and a hoe and the many types of pruning shears almost carving out the outline of a “wine tailor’s shop.”
The oenological section with pumps, the earliest collected here are from the late 1800s, these are balance pumps operated by two people, moving on to those that are part of the mechanical evolution beginning in the early 1900s. In the same area, filters, presses, presses, scales.
Also, sparkling wine machines, a very first bottling machine, a labeling machine.
The reconstruction of a winemaker’s laboratory with more than 30 objects including scales, ampoules, microscopes, cooling column, tasting glass, etc. collected from various wine analysis laboratories and dating back to the late 19th century is intriguing, some of which, especially the glassware, are still in use: pipettes, flasks, burettes, graduated cylinders.
Hand-held immersion thermometers for checking fermentation temperatures, an early example of an electronic thermometer.
A curiosity
Among the curiosities were a Malligand, an instrument that measured the percentage of alcohol, an acidometer for determining acidity, volatile, and then pipettes, and graduated cylinders that were used to make up the cuts between the various wines and test them on a small scale before making them. Also, small precision balances, capable of measuring down to the thousandth. This is completed by a microscope from the late 1800s.
Older items dating back to the late 1700s include two wooden and cotton bag filters that were used to pass wine through.
Rich the corks, corkers and corkscrews section displayed by type and evolution.
A collection that represents a new small piece added to the narrative of wine, a commodity that has been a heritage of humanity for centuries, and that “belongs to culture, paradoxically we might say more to culture than to nature,” to use Tullio Gregory’s words.
Museum spaces
The exhibition space is diffusely lit with both natural light from the immense windows that open onto the countryside and wall lighting; adjacent to the space is a large lounge with a wine bar for visitor reception and conviviality.
Upstairs, in an atmospheric open loft overlooking the barriques, is the technical tasting room with more than 30 seats.
Outside, plots as far as the eye can see where you can have an immersive experience in a contemporary agricultural reality where precision farming is practiced with state-of-the-art machines and technologies with very little environmental impact.
The Collection
In fact, the collection is located on the estate of the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, which insists partly in the municipality of Chianciano Terme and partly in the town of Montepulciano, a green oasis powered largely by solar energy in the most beautiful Tuscany . A wine retreat of 180 hectares dedicated to vineyards, olive groves and woodland, an ideal environment for the game that inhabits it in its natural state. A cross-section of the most evocative Tuscan landscape, planted with vines and more, where, moreover, two Etruscan tombs identified by the Soprintendenza ai Beni Archeologici and not yet excavated also insist behind the vineyards.
ENOTURISM is practiced at the estate with a wide range of proposals for trekking, tastings, picnics on the grass, open-air lunches, and with specialized staff able to conduct tastings and walks among the rows but also guided tours at the museum. Visits that can be linked to wine experiences or completely autonomous.
INFO LE MACCHINE DEL VINO
Strada Provinciale della Chiana, 62 Chianciano Terme (SI)
www.carpineto.com
OPENING HOURS
Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
VISIT
Free admission with guided tour upon reservation at 347/7603727 or by email tour@carpineto.com
PRODUCER
