Winemaker Notes
Ruby red in color tending toward garnet, this wine offers fine, elegant aromas of preserved black cherries, white pepper, jam and tobacco. On the palate, it is both full-bodied and intense as well as harmonious with velvety tannins.
Pair with game, roasts and seasoned pecorino cheese.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
What catches your attention immediately here is the freshness to the fruit. Cherry, plum and orange-peel provide brightness to the wine from the start. Then, it’s full-bodied with a well-placed balance of fruit and oak tannin that will guarantee a long life to this riserva. However, it’s delicious even now.
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Vinous
The 2016 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Riserva Bossona is deeply alluring yet still needs to unwind a bit more. It’s dark in nature yet floral, with ripe black cherries, balsam herbs, hints of cacao and smoke. This enters the palate soft and silky, energized by brilliant acidity, with candied ginger giving way to red currants and finally, a coating of fine tannin toward the close. Both savory and sweet, this tapers off with a herbal and floral thrust and a twang of salted licorice. Brava; what a beauty. The Riserva Bossona is 100% Sangiovese refined for two years in tonneaux, followed by another year in cask.
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Decanter
Dei’s Riserva see long ageing in a combination of tonneaux and larger cask, followed by a full year in bottle before release. It comes from the estate's prize vineyard, Bossona - a sunny south-facing amphitheatre on stony, sandy soil rich in marine fossils. A heady mix of violets, tobacco, pepper and wild brambly fruit waft from the glass. The palate is velvety with soft, plush fruit and pliant tannins. Dark plum and blackberry laced with vanilla highlights sweetness and ripeness rather than tension.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of camphor, coffee bean and coconut mingle with whiffs of violet. Full-bodied and enveloping, the palate features dried cherry, licorice and tobacco framed in tightly knit, close-grained tannins.
Among Italy's elite red grape varieties, Sangiovese has the perfect intersection of bright red fruit and savory earthiness and is responsible for the best red wines of Tuscany. While it is best known as the chief component of Chianti, it is also the main grape in Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and reaches the height of its power and intensity in the complex, long-lived Brunello di Montalcino. Somm Secret—Sangiovese doubles under the alias, Nielluccio, on the French island of Corsica where it produces distinctly floral and refreshing reds and rosés.
This significant Tuscan village—not to be confused with the red grape of the same name widely grown in Abruzzo and the Marche regions—was home to one of the first four Italian DOCGs granted in 1980.
Based on the Sangiovese grape (here called Prugnolo Gentile), the village’s prized wine called Vino Nobile di Montepulciano ranks stylistically in between Chianti Classico, for its finesse, and Brunello di Montalcino for its power. With a deep ruby color, heavy concentration and a firm structure given by the village's heavy, cool clay soils, most Vino Nobile di Montepulciano will demand some bottle age.