San Filippo
Le Lucere
Brunello di Montalcino
2016

The producer

Founded in the 1970s by Roberto Giannelli, the San Filippo estate is located in northern Montalcino, directly across from Biondi Santi’s Il Greppo estate, just around two kilometres from the old town. 11 hectares of Sangiovese vineyards are planted with north-eastern exposure and in clay soils with marl and limestone. Regularly the recipient of high scores from the world’s leading wine critics, Le Lucere is one of San Filippo’s single vineyard wines, which is produced in very limited quantities.

The wine

Fruit for Le Lucere derives from a 3-hectare vineyard with clayey calcareous soil and north, north-east exposure. Fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks and is followed by three year’s ageing in barriques, and another 16 months in bottle. A wine of elegance and concentration, Le Lucere has a full body with layers of ripe black fruit and earthy complexity, firm yet round tannins and a long length. 

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.