Poggio di Sotto
Brunello di Montalcino Riserva DOCG
Brunello di Montalcino 2013

The producer

A relative newcomer in quality terms to Brunello di Montalcino, Poggio di Sotto was founded by Piero Palmucci in 1989. The estate is located in the south-eastern corner of the region, around Castelnuovo dell’Abate, and are widely known as being stalwart traditionalists in their approach to Brunello di Montalcino, with the wines maturing on traditional Slavonian oak botti thus fully allowing the grape material and vineyards to express themselves.

Only 16 ha of vineyards, entirely planted to Sangiovese and organically farmed, produce only 3,000 cases of wines in total per year. In 2012 Palmucci sold the estate to Claudio Tipa, owner of the Grattamacco estate in Bolghero.

The wine

Fruit for Poggio di Sotto’s Brunello Riserva is derived from high hills overlooking the Orcia River valley, with vineyards at three different altitudes used to achieve the most balanced wines. Only produced in exceptional vintages, the Riserva ferments and macerates in 70 hl Slavonian oak vats and finally ages for 5 years in 25 to 35 hl Slavonian oak botti and 1 year in bottle. A wine of power, finesse, and balance, with immediate approachability in youth yet immense ageing potential.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.