Being in a winemaking family four generations deep, Lucia Minoggio essentially always knew what she’d be doing with her life. “I didn’t have much of a choice,” Lucia jokingly says. But that didn’t stop her from pursuing her first passion: ballet. She danced ballet for five years in Tuscany after receiving a scholarship at Balletto di Toscana. But in 2008, she decided to leave that life to fully pursue winemaking.
She traveled the world working in wineries from New Zealand, California, and the south of France to learn about work in both the cellar and in the lab. “My experience abroad was invaluable,” she says, but she felt called to use her skills back home in Italy. She reached out to Frescobaldi, one of the oldest growing wineries in Italy, and quickly was hired.
Currently, she works as the winemaker for Castello Nipozzano, one of the seven Frescobaldi estates in Tuscany. And although the Frescobaldi family has been making wine in Tuscany for 30 generations—that’s 700 years!—Lucia gets the chance to innovate at every turn.
Read more about Minoggio and her pick for Wine of the Week at groknation.com.