Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2021 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano launches from the glass with a cascade of dried rose, cedar shavings, crushed rocks and dried black cherry aromas. It's silky smooth and pliant with racy red and hints of blue fruit that ride a stream of fresh acidity as saline mineral tones and a balsamic tinge collect toward the close. A pleasantly bitter concentration lingers as the 2021 finishes poised and refined with dramatic length and potency. Inner florals swirl across a bed of fine-grained tannins on the close. What a beauty.
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.