Back Up The Truck! 95WS Tuscan Stunner for $41!

Hi Everyone!

I’m back home after a whirlwind tour of Italy with my mother and brother; we went to Montalcino, San Gimignano, Panzano in Chianti, Florence and Rome, eating and drinking the whole way. It was resplendent in many shades of awesome. I’ll have some tales to tell down the road, but today I’m writing about an amazing wine from a Tuscan village I didn’t quite make it to on this trip: Montepulciano.

I have to stop referring to specific small Tuscan villages as “walled, hilltop towns” as if that’s a distinguishing characteristic. They all are.  After spending a week in the Tuscan countryside, I can testify that I never spent any time in a valley, either driving or visiting, because the towns and roads are all in the hills. If you told me that Tuscan vampires came out at night but only in the valleys, I’d believe you because everything is built to avoid those vampires.

That said, Montepulciano is a walled hilltop town, surrounded by vineyards that grow a particular clone of Sangiovese called Prugnolo Gentile (there is a Southern Italian grape that’s actually called “Montepulciano” but it’s confusingly never grown in Montepulciano – I had a dream where I brought the grape to the town and created a wormhole). In contrast to Brunello’s Sangiovese Grosso and Chianti’s Sangiovese Piccolo, Prugnolo Gentile (meaning “plummy and soft”, kinda) is richer and generally less acidic, and the building block for one of Italy’s great wines: Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Nobiles often nose like Chianti Classicos but drink like Brunellos, large and long-lived, but their lesser lore makes them far more affordable for wine drinkers, especially compared to Brunellos.

Although Carpineto has been quietly producing wines from all over Tuscany for over 50 years, it’s their Vino Nobiles that have always captured my attention – structured like linebackers but still graceful and gorgeous, and the stars aligned for this amazing 2013 Riserva. Simply put, it’s the best points-to-price ratio I’ve seen in years. If this wine doesn’t place highly on the WS Top 100 this year…  I’ll be wrong.

Behold this handsome beast: richly layered and tightly strung with black fruits and slow, deliberate deployment, some mineral notes. Drinks like twice the price, lovely mix of masculine and feminine on the nose with violet and cedar, the tannins are firm but don’t poke out past the ample body. Aged a year longer than the DOCG requires, drinking now but could go a decade standing on its head. Whatever you buy of this, you’ll wish you bought more (I do). If there’s any left by Saturday we’ll pour it at 3pm in the River District Vintage Room.

Carpineto Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Riserva 2013. 95 points Wine Spectator, 15 6-packs available, $40.49 +tax

Start your engines, and Happy Drinking!

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