Region
Italy › Toscana › Montepulciano › Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG
Type
red · still
Grapes
Sangiovese
Alcohol
14%
Volume
750 mL
Bottled
2019-07-03
Tasting Notes(1)
3.7
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Lunadoro sits at Valiano, in the Montepulciano commune on the Val di Chiana flank. The estate runs to 40 hectares with 12 under vine - 10 of Sangiovese, 2 split between Merlot and Petit Verdot - cordon-spur trained; the Consorzio adds clay soils, 5,000 vines per hectare, and ventilation off the Val di Chiana and Lake Trasimeno. Schenk Italian Wineries has owned the property since 2016. Organic conversion started in 2020, so this 2015 predates it.
The composition is Sangiovese, here under its Montepulciano name, Prugnolo Gentile. Neither Lunadoro nor Schenk says which vines feed it; a regional account puts Quercione among the estate's two vineyard bodies, the parcel running toward Cortona. The house protocol is hand picking in the first ten days of October, fermentation at controlled temperature in stainless steel, then at least 24 months in French oak and 12 in bottle - which is what the DOCG asks of a Riserva, three years of maturation with one of them in glass. In 2015 the Consorzio recorded picking mainly between 21 September and 5 October, ahead of the house window.
On the wood the producer's own text is confused. It gives "French oak barriques (20 and 30 hl)", but 20 to 30 hectolitres are cask volumes, not the 225 litres of a barrique; the same figures appear under the word tonneaux on the sheet for the estate's base Nobile, and this bottle names botti and barrique together. Schenk publishes the barrique wording still. Firm: French oak, and a minimum of two years in wood.
The Consorzio's 2015 was hot, dry and sunny - July around 2.4 C above the historical average, maxima averaging above 33 C, and 586 mm of rain against the roughly 750 mm the report treats as normal, carried less by volume than by a soil profile recharged over autumn 2014 and by well-spaced falls. Hail struck in June and July. This bottle was filled on 3 July 2019, 42 months after the DOCG clock starts on 1 January following the harvest, so the wine sat well past the wood minimum with its bottle year still ahead of it.
