Le Potazzine - Rosso di Montalcino 2023 (750ml)
Price: $58.99
| Producer | Le Potazzine |
| Country | Italy |
| Region | Tuscany |
| Varietal | Sangiovese Grosso |
| Vintage | 2023 |
| Sku | 203898 |
| Size | 750ml |
 |
Le Potazzine Description
"Now 28 years old, Le Potazzine is the fruit of the work of Montalcino native Gigliola Giannetti, her ex-husband enologist (now out of the picture) and their two daughters, who have stepped up to help run this 12-acre estate a couple of miles southwest of town.
Here, Giannetti, 55, stands out as a story of grit and determination—one that I’d like to believe you can taste in the wines.
“These are the potazzine,” Giannetti says as she introduces daughters Viola, 28, the enologist, who also works with her mother in the vineyards, and Sofia, 25, who works in the office and does a bit of everything as necessity dictates.
Potazzine, a local name for small songbirds that populate the Tuscan countryside, was the nickname given to Giannetti’s girls by their maternal grandmother. So it was a natural name for the estate when it launched in the early 2000s with its first Brunello, from the 1997 vintage.
Brunello and its sibling—lighter, fresher, easy-drinking-when-young Rosso di Montalcino—are Le Potazzine’s two main wines. They are distinguished during harvest by selection on the sorting tables outside the winery by Giannetti, her daughters and cellar manager Roberta Tiberi.
Le Potazzine Brunello is released after five years of aging and could be classified as a Riserva on that basis.
Giannetti has Brunello in her blood. And on her extraordinary career path, from office worker to Brunello producer, she has seen more of Montalcino than most anyone.
She was born on Montalcino’s historic Argiano estate, where her parents worked in the cellar and vineyards. Out of school, at 19 years old in 1985, she worked as an office assistant for the legendary Franco Biondi Santi of Biondi-Santi. Two years later, after saving and borrowing money, she decided to quit her job to launch her own business—a wine shop on the central square in Montalcino.
In 1993, the year Viola was born, Giannetti and her then-husband, consulting enologist Giuseppe Gorelli, decided to buy a country house and surrounding vineyards on a high plateau at an altitude of more than 1,600 feet. The vineyards were poorly planted, she recalls, and the area was not seen as the best for ripening Sangiovese."
- From Wine Spectator Magazine
Wine Advocate: 90 Points
The Le Potazzine 2023 Rosso di Montalcino (with 16,000 bottles made) shows attractive aromas of dried pomegranate, grenadine and fresh iris root. The bouquet encapsulates the pretty fresh and fruit-forward aromas inherent to Sangiovese. I love the lively and food-friendly personality of this pretty wine that ages in Slavonian oak casks for a brief 10 months. This is one of the better Rossos from this vintage.
