Le Potazzine
Montalcino, Tuscany
The Le Potazzine vineyards are endowed with well-drained, crumbly soil with streaks of limestone and clay, a multitude of microclimates oscillating between warm days and cool nights, and warm summers and autumns.
As one of the most compelling wines in the world, Brunello di Montalcino expresses Sangiovese’s complexity with poise and great precision. And Le Potazzine do just that. Their wines bear the hallmarks of quality, lightness, elegance, and a hint of salinity. In fact, these wines transcend Sangiovese. All the sour cherry, raspberry, and wild strawberry fruitiness with the forest floor and tilled earth scent that marks this noble variety are accounted for and then some. They are not bulky or brooding, luxurious or woody, they just have an innate ethereal quality to them and abound with the most pristine sweetness and elegance. It’s very difficult to put a finger on what makes these so special, but it certainly has a bit to do with the altitude of the vineyard and Gigliola’s foresight to plant it in the upper reaches of Montalcino.
In the late 1980’s, Gigliola Giannetti purchased a small parcel of land at 530 meters altitude in the upper reaches of Montalcino, near the township. By 1997, she’d replanted the entire vineyard and she released the first Brunello, which established Le Potazzine’s reputation and set her up for success.
Historically not a favoured area for growing Brunello, Gigliola’s vineyard is now the envy of the region thanks to its temperate microclimate and the enormous diurnal shifts occurring during the ripening period. Harvest here happens about three weeks after the lower parts of Montalcino, meaning even in the warmest vintages the fruit is still filled with refreshing acidity.
In the cellar, Gigliola is accompanied by her daughters, Viola and Sofia. Together, they lend a deft hand to the ferments using only ambient yeasts over long macerations (up to 45 days) in stainless steel tanks and conical wood fermenters, and gently coax the wines into large 30-50 hectolitre Slavonian casks. After ageing well beyond the minimum requirements of their respective appellations (the IGT could be labelled Rosso di Montalcino, the Rosso could be Brunello, and the Brunello could be Riserva in every vintage), the wines are simply bottled with minute sulfur additions and without fining or filtration. They are all certified BIO organic, even if not noted on the labels.
