After all these years, the wine world can still surprise us. Even in the rarefied precincts of Montalcino, Tuscany, home to some of the most expensive vineyard real estate in the world, there are still opportunities to find value—not “cheap” wine, mind you, but conscientiously farmed, hand-crafted wine that isn’t expensive. Today’s Rosso di Montalcino from winemaker/painter/renaissance woman Carla Visconti packs a lot of Tuscan nobility into a modestly priced—and beautifully labeled—bottle. What we appreciated most was the wine’s “trueness” to the spirit of Rosso di Montalcino: It’s a joyful, juicy, aromatic expression of the Sangiovese variety, vibrant and pure and as authentic as it gets. This is the “farmer-winemaker” side of Montalcino, and we are here for it!
To repeat: We’re talking about a gorgeous Certified Organic Sangiovese from 40-year-old vines on the southeast slope of the Montalcino hill. Carla Visconti produces her wines at her family’s La Palazzetta farm just outside the hamlet of Castelnuovo dell’Abate (for the Montalcino-philes out there, La Palazzetta is a literal stone’s throw from the legendary Poggio di Sotto). Carla was a psychedelic painter in the late 1960s while studying at Florence's famed Accademia di Belle Arti, and you get a sense of her free-spirited former life in her attention-grabbing labels, all of which feature her 1972 painting “La Rinascita” (“the rebirth”).
Carla began producing her Castello Abate wines in the early 1990s, sourcing fruit from choice older vines on the La Palazzetta estate. There are some significant altitudes here—most sites climb above 300 meters of elevation—and expositions are predominantly south-east, in Montalcino’s classic clay/marl soils. Carla’s Rosso from 2022 (a ripe but not overblown vintage, as we’ve seen so far) is a straightforward proposition from a winemaking perspective: grapes undergo a two day “cold soak” before fermentation on ambient yeasts in stainless steel, after which the finished wine spends 14 months in used French oak tonneaux before bottling. The wine then spends about four months aging in bottle before release.
So, while it is indeed pure, high in energy, and perfumed, there’s no lack of structure here—there’s some muscle, in fact. In the glass, it’s a medium garnet-red moving to pink and orange at the rim, bursting with scents of red and black cherry, currants, blackberry, plum, anise, rose petals, bay leaf, underbrush, aromatic herbs, and baking spice. It displays a precise balance of fruit, earth, acid, and tannin—everything is in its proper place, making it a pleasure to drink now and over the next few years. Decant it 15-30 minutes before serving at 60 degrees in Burgundy stems and pair it with whatever meats you’ve decided to grill. This is Toscana with a capital “T.” Enjoy!
