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Montevertine

Montevertine

Its almost becoming obnoxious at this point. it seems that every single vintage of Montevertine is more beloved than the last.  There are not many wines that manage to maintain a 97-100 point score from the top critics every year. Even their entry level Pian del Ciampolo easily bests any other Tuscan estates top wine.

Here is our yearly offer of the Montevertine Rosso di Toscana along with the Pian del Ciampolo.

This is an extra special release this year, as there is a new wine to be had.

The 2021 "Il Duemilaventuno di Sergio Manetti" is being released in magnum only. The first new release from Montevertine is decades. A bottling of just 1,000 magnums celebrating 100 years since the founder’s birth and coinciding with a truly spectacular vintage in the region. Produced from the original vines of Le Pergole Torte planted in the late 1960s and complemented by a small amount of Montevertine’s best fruit.  If there was ever a unicorn bottle to add to your collection, this is it. We got 2 magnums.

We also have a special vertical in magnum of Montevertine rosso 2020, 2021, and 2022!!

  Wine lovers and critics like Eric Asimov and Antonio Galloni have praised Montervertine for years, saying tasting their wines have "taken their breath away" and have called the estate "truly iconic".  There have been retrospective tastings dating back decades on their wines.

We could not agree more.  There is something extremely special about these wines.  Their elegance, purity, its the heart and soul of pure Sangiovese fruit. I often say that Montervertine drinks like the Burgundy of Italy.  They are aromatic and lifted wines, wines you could smell for hours before even taking a sip.  There's nothing hard-edged about them, they are seamless from front to back.  And honestly, just a sheer pleasure to smell and sip. I put bottles of every single release in my own cellar, I have no other choice, they are just so beautiful and age so gracefully.

One of the most important lessons in wine is this: great producers make great wine no matter the vintage. Montevertine is a textbook study in this. Decades of experience crafting some of the most pristinely elegant wines in Italy – coupled with helpfully high-elevation vineyards – allowed them to harness the power of the vintage and use it to their advantage.  Montevertine is an icon, the wines will age for decades no matter the vintage.

A quick background on the estate and why it's not called "Chianti":  It's situated in the heart of Chianti Classico, near Radda (highest elevation in Chianti Classico), on a historic hilltop hamlet called Montevertine that dates back to the 11th century and was used then as a defense fortress.  In the 60s, it was purchased by Sergio Manetti as a second home and was planted to 6 acres of vines (farmed biodynamically!) to produce a humble wine for the family and neighbors to enjoy.  By the early 70s, local praise for the quality of his wines made Sergio quickly left his day job to focus on growing and producing this wine. This became a bit of a problem. Back then, the Chianti Consortium had rules for the wineries of the region--all Chianti wines must be made with a percentage of the white grape, Trebbiano.  Sergio wanted nothing to do with this and wanted to keep his wines pure, utilizing almost 100% Sangiovese with small amounts of Canaiolo and Colorino.  So he backed out of the Consortium, and to this day his wines are simply labeled as "Rosso di Toscana", forgoing the Chianti Classico label, which many others were not willing to do for fear of losing out on the increased sales and marketing that having Chianti on your label brings.  Montevertine doesn't even make enough wine to worry about not selling it all, and frankly, the wines are so singular that labeling them Chianti would almost be a travesty.

About the collector's 2021 “Il Duemilaventuno di Sergio Manetti” Magnums...

Through his remarkable vision and ambition, founder Sergio Manetti established Montevertine as one of the greatest estates in all of Italy, setting a towering new benchmark for quality in Chianti. Notably, he did so, not through technological enhancements or the imposition of outside varieties and cellar practices, but by harnessing the nobility of the autochthonous Sangiovese and striving for its purest possible expression. The release of a special bottling is a rarity at Montevertine; their most basic offering (the beloved Pian del Ciampolo) already bests many an estate’s top wine, and when no less an authority than Antonio Galloni declares your Le Pergole Torte “one of the world’s elite wines,” it leaves little room to scale upward. Thus, we are overjoyed to present “Il Duemilaventuno di Sergio Manetti” (“Sergio Manetti’s 2021”), a bottling of just 1,000 magnums celebrating 100 years since the founder’s birth and coinciding with a truly spectacular vintage in the region. Produced from the original vines of Le Pergole Torte planted in the late 1960s and complemented by a small amount of Montevertine’s best fruit, “Il Duemilaventuno di Sergio Manetti” spent two full years in a single 16-hectoliter barrel—a 12-year-old Slavonian cask that Martino Manetti considers one of the estate’s best. While offering at this youthful stage only a glimpse of treasures still to be unveiled, this is nonetheless pulse-quickeningly layered and complex: a dramatic unfurling of saturated black cherries, blackberries, smoke-tinged church spices, subtly sanguine minerality, and that tangy, precise, cohesive acidity so characteristic of the estate’s style, all undergirded by honest but perfectly rendered tannins. What ravishes most about this bottling, however, is not its intensity but its purity; here we find the very DNA of Montevertine presented with breathtaking frankness, culminating in a wine that feels unscultped, unauthored, and utterly elemental. Following in Le Pergole Torte’s footsteps, the label for “Il Duemilaventuno di Sergio Manetti” comes from a private sketchbook of the late Alberto Manfredi, the local artist behind every Le Pergole Torte label and a close friend of Sergio’s.

Wines arrive next week. Wines are very limited with a case of each 750mls.  We have 2 or less of each magnum available.

In store pickup and shipping are available, as always. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to respond to this email.

Pricing is discounted to some of the lowest in the country. 
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