Gaja Pieve Santa Restituta Brunello di Montalcino Sugarille 2015

According to archives found at Pieve Santa Restituta, the Sugarille growing site was already devoted to the cultivation of grapes for wine by the mid-16th century (1541). The name Sugarille (SOO-gah-REEL-leh) is derived from the Latin suber (sughero in Italian), meaning cork oak, possibly because cork trees were found there. Here, in the estate’s top growing site, white rocky soils (poor in nutrients and rich in calcareous clay), excellent drainage, south-western exposure, and ventilation arriving from the Tyrrhenian sea to the west create the ideal conditions for a long-lived, structured expression of Sangiovese Grosso.

The more muscular and fruit-forward of the two Brunelli made by Pieve Santa Restituta is the 2015 Brunello di Montalcino Sugarille. This is a darkly saturated and rich wine that pours from the bottle with dark fruit, plum and black currant. Velvety in texture, tactile and generous, this is a long-term wine to set aside in your cellar. Only 6,000 bottles were made. You'll want to give it time to relax and take on more volume with age. Truth be told, like the Barbaresco wines from Gaja that have changed stylistically going from a more extracted style to a streamlined approach, these two wines from the family's Montalcino property seem to have evolved along similar lines. Sugarille has gone from being more flashy and contemporary to understated and classic in this newest incarnation.