Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
A rich and dense Vino Nobile with a full body, soft and velvety tannins and loads of dark berries and bark. Extremely well done. Delicious now, but built for aging. Better in 2022.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A pure expression of Sangiovese, the 2015 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Riserva Vigneto Santa Pia offers a dark and saturated quality of fruit that builds in intensity and depth. The fruit is ripe, succulent and redolent of the warm summers of this part of beautiful Tuscany with its open fields and hot winds.
-
Wine Spectator
Focused and elegant, this red offers black cherry, blackberry, iron, earth and spice flavors. Balanced and fresh on the long finish. Drink now 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.