MASSA MARITTIMA, Italy — An unwritten convention among wine scribes is that you write about wines your readers can obtain. This makes sense, of course. There’s nothing more frustrating than to read about some wonderful bottle but — oh, by the way — you can’t get it. Well, thanks, pal.

Still, occasionally you come across a producer so distinctive, so fundamentally worthy, that this prerequisite of availability is ignored in exchange for the greater good of knowledge for its own sake. Such is the case with the tiny Tuscan producer called Massa Vecchia.

Now, you can get Massa Vecchia wines. They’re imported in minuscule quantity by the San Francisco-based importer, Summa Vitis Wines (www.summavitis.com). A few New York merchants, such as Astor, Crush, and Italian Wine Merchants have some older bottlings still on their shelves. (And there’s always the Internet.) But the reality is that finding Massa Vecchia requires the perseverance and tracking skills of a Sioux warrior.

Finding the Massa Vecchia winery itself is no easier. After winding my way up to the Tuscan hill town of Massa Marittima, only to fail to see any winery direction signs, I spiraled down the other side to the main road and pulled into an old Esso gas station. Neither the cashier nor the station’s young barista knew of Massa Vecchia. But just then a beautiful young blonde woman arrived to pay her bill. Hearing my inquiry, she turned to the cashier, whom she clearly knew, and said, “But of course you know it. It’s the winery of Fabrizio Niccolaini and Patrizia Bartolini.”

With that, there were smiles all round. But, of course. Fabrizio and Patrizia! “It’s right nearby,” the cashier said.

Mr. Niccolaini, 38, happened to be standing outside when I arrived. Massa Vecchia is a Tinkerbell of a winery, something you feel you can hold in the palm of your hand. The cellar contains an assortment of barrels and small casks, some made of oak and others, called tini, crafted from chestnut, which was once Tuscany’s preferred wood for casks before the now-universal use of oak, which has a tighter grain and admits less oxygen through its denser wood staves.

Mr. Niccolaini’s wine vision is, if not unique, then original and of another era. His vineyard, which he inherited from his father and grandfather, is just 8.6 acres. And within that tiny plot are such white grapes as vermentino, ansonica, sauvignon blanc, trebbiano, and malvasia di candia, and red varieties such as merlot, cabernet sauvignon, aleatico, sangiovese, alicante, and malvasia nera. All are at least 35 years old, including the cabernet and merlot, which is unusual as these two varieties are generally only newly planted in Tuscany. He has also recently planted another vineyard with only sangiovese.

Mr. Niccolaini subscribes to the deceptively simple sustainable agriculture theories of the Japanese farmerphilosopher Masanobu Fukuoka, detailed in his 1975 book, “The One-Straw Revolution.” “We use no chemicals, no herbicides, really not even much in the way of machines,” Mr. Niccolaini said.

What little plowing is done, usually to “rip”the soil between the vine rows to turn over the crop cover, is performed by one of two white, long-horned oxen kept by Mr. Niccolaini for this purpose. “We’ll be selling them soon,” he said with regret. “They’re getting too old. We need to get younger oxen to replace them.”

The wines are as original and uncompromising as everything else about this exercise in puristic winegrowing. For example, Mr. Niccolaini’s dry white wine, now simply called Bianco (it was previously called Arriento), is 60% vermentino with a balance of roughly 10% each of sauvignon blanc, malvasia di candia, ansonica, and trebbiano. He ferments this white wine with the skins, which is conventional for red wines but almost unknown for whites. “The grapes are pressed by foot twice a day for five days,”he explained.”Then the wine spends three weeks on the skins, with a daily punch down.” Aged in small chestnut casks, the resulting dry white wine is nothing short of thrilling, with a surprisingly bright gold color and a powerful scent of wild herbs and just the slightest astringency (from the skins) in the finish. It’s like no other white wine from anywhere.

And so it goes, wine after wine. Not least is a vin santo with the texture and color of the world’s most luscious motor oil, so dense and unctuous is this sweet, honey-hued dessert wine. Made entirely from sangiovese, Massa Vecchia’s vin santo rivals Tuscany’s universally acknowledged greatest vin santo, the one made by Avignonesi.

For Mr. Niccolaini, simplicity and deference is everything. “Wine is not something separate from the earth, from the planet, or from us. When you cultivate vineyards with care and you make wine in a way that allows everything to come through, then it’s enough, don’t you think?”