Poderi Sanguineto I & II, Rosso di Montepulciano 2021

Producer: Poderi Sanguineto 
Region: Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy
Grape Varieties: Sangiovese
Viticulture: Organic
Category: Red
Size: 750ml bottle

Dora walks and works in the vines all day every day and has a very keen eye and confident touch. There are zero chemicals used here and the soils are worked up to 3 times per year. Treatments are entirely organic and relatively few in application compared to those of her neighbors. Dora even revitalizes very old vines by cutting them off at their base and allowing a new vine to grow from the old trunk, a very old-fashioned and rare local practice; any brand-new plantings are selection massale. Organic olive trees (harvested for the pressing of oil) and wildlife (harvested for the dinner table) abound in the vineyard. 

Harvest is by hand. The fruit is fully destemmed, gently enough that many berries remain whole. The pressing is long and slow in order to get carefully to the meat of the grape nearest the seeds; Dora feels that it is from here that the sweetest, more complex flavors can be elicited. The must is fermented spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in concrete vats; aging takes place in variously sized oak botti. Interestingly, only one red wine is vinified—it is always declared at harvest as a future Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.