From a five-star vintage, and according to the producer a Rosso to drink over the next two decades. Wine Enthusiast awarded 92 points, Robert Parker 90. In magnum.
Bright ruby red, now with garnet edges. The nose is perfumed and fine: forest berries and blue flowers, wild herbs, then sour cherry, blood orange and a hint of star anise and black tea. On the palate the wine is elegant rather than broad, with taut, fine-grained tannins and a fresh acidity that energises everything. There is a saline, mineral streak recalling the altitude of the vineyards. The finish is long, polished and surprisingly perfumed. Wine Enthusiast set the drinking window at 2023 to 2028; from magnum that shifts, and it drinks at its best between 2026 and 2032. Around 17 degrees, with grilled meat, roast poultry or a matured cheese.
In Montalcino, grandparents call their granddaughters potazzine, after the small, brightly coloured birds of the Tuscan countryside. That is what their grandmother called Viola and Sofia, the daughters of owner Gigliola Giannetti — and the estate grew in step with them: Viola was born in 1993, the founding year, and when Sofia arrived in 1996 two more hectares took the total to five.
The Rosso here is no by-product. Almost half the Brunello production is declassified into Rosso: the same vineyards, the same wild yeasts, the same forty-day fermentation — only twelve months in the large Slavonian casks instead of nearly four years. Unfiltered, like everything here.
2020 was the year of lockdown. The family tended the vineyards by hand until, in the producer's words, they looked like gardens.
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