Winemaker Notes
Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is a brilliant ruby color with hints of garnet as it ages. Intense bouquet, pungent and mature, with aromas of ripe cherry, plum and violets. Flavorful, balanced and persistent, it has soft, velvety tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This is all about complex, ripe plum and blackberry flavors, woodsy funk and supple tannins, with flashes of leather, mineral and camphor. More linear on the finish, where earth, mineral and tobacco notes reign. Drink now through 2033.
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James Suckling
Pretty red-cherry essence, raspberry bush and other forest fruit with nutmeg undertones. Medium to full body, beautiful acidity and a taut finish that shows both drive and length.
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Wine Enthusiast
Soft and smooth, this polished red offers aromas of wild berry, red plum and baking spice. Reflecting the nose, the juicy palate doles out fleshy black cherry, ripe blackberry and star anise. It's already accessible, with supple tannins but will offer fine drinking for the next several years. Drink through 2023.
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.