Pieve Santa Restituta Brunello di Montalcino 2020

This wine was first produced in 2005 and is a blend of several vineyards, currently utilising the 9ha of Deserti in the North West near Torrenieri (250 metres elevation) and for the first time since 2019 a parcel from the Bolsignano vineyard (450 meters elevation), a beautiful 7.4 hectare site sourrounded by 50 hectares of natural woodland. The Brunello also contains a small percentage from the vineyards used for the iconic single site wines of Rennina and Sugarille.

The inclusion of this higher altitude vineyard in the blend (more to come in the future when their Villa a Tolli site is included which is at 650 meters) is an exciting development, adding a higher component of Galestro than the clay dominent Deserti site adding further freshness and structure.
They use cool, chilled ferments utilising whole berries and some whole-bunch. Stem usage is carefully managed as to avoid any green flavours in the wine. The key advantage to stem usage is they can reduce final alcohol by volume in a wine by up to 1%.

They only keep the ‘flower’ of the ferment for their wines, just the juice that is drained off post fermentation. Once the majority of the fermented juice is drained off the natural weight of the cap/skins extracts another 10 to 15% that they also use. Any pressed skins/resulting wine are not used at all for the wines of Pieve Santa Restituta.
The elevage however for this wine is a little different to the other two single site wines. After primary ferment is completed the wine spends the first six months of its life in 2yr or older French oak Tonneau, no new oak is used for any of the wines. After this period the wine is moved to large format oak Botti for the remainder of the two years required by the DOCG rules.

Then the wine is moved to concrete for 6-12 months before it is bottled. This wine is the introduction to their Brunello’s, a little fleshier in fruit and softer in tannin and designed to be an earlier drinking style and approachable on release.