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About

A slope, a stone cellar, and no hurry.

Matteo Bellandi bought 7 hectares on the southern hills of Siena in 1978. Everything since has been the same family, adding land slowly enough that nothing about the way the wine is made had to change.

A painted bunch of grapes, dark and red against a band of ochre.

The name

The name is the whole idea.

The name comes from the old Tuscan velare, to veil, to conceal. The best things need time before they are uncovered.

It is the shortest description of how the place works. Nothing leaves here before it is ready, and the estate would rather be late than early.

Tenuta Veloria

It started in barrels under the house.

Matteo Bellandi was the son of a local farmer. In 1978 he bought 7 hectares on the southern hills of Siena, a slope, an old stone cellar, and no money for modern production. The first vintages were made in barrels under the family house.

In 1986 Matteo and his wife Elisa released the first bottle sold under the Veloria name. Elisa did the selling, and the name reached past the province because she carried it there.

The vineyard was enlarged over the decades that followed, one parcel at a time. It is 42 hectares now, with its own ageing cellar and a small winery still run by the Bellandi family. The size changed. The way the wine is made did not.

Two pickers in the vines, one up a ladder in the canopy and one filling a bucket below.
  • 1892The family house
  • 19787 hectares and an old stone cellar
  • 1986The first bottle sold under the Veloria name
  • Today42 hectares, the ageing cellar, the same family
A painted panorama: a hill village of pale houses with terracotta roofs and a church tower, cypresses down the slope, terraced vineyard rows in the foreground and a lake below the wooded hills.

The family

Four people, in the order they arrived.

The label dates from 1978. The family worked this slope long before there was a label to put on anything, and the house was standing in 1892.