A recent vertical tasting of Poggio Antico’s flagship Brunello di Montalcino DOCG revealed how the high altitude Tuscan estate aims to showcase terroir over winemaking. The tasting, which concerned a selection of vintages from 1988 to 2020, sought to shed light on what host and Italian wine expert Walter Speller called “quite an obscure estate”. “You don’t hear a lot about Poggio Antico,” he said, “but to me it’s special because it consistently shows terroir-driven wines year after year. It’s a style of wine not set on fruit, but on minerality.” The result of the union of I Poggio, Le Martine and Madre in 1976, Poggio Antico, situated south of the village of Montalcino, has grown into an estate with 38 hectares of vineyard (largely Sangiovese with a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon and an even smaller amount of Chardonnay for non-commercial wines). The estate has been certified as organic since 2020. In 2017, Poggio Antico was acquired by Belgian entrepreneur Marcel Van Poecke and his company Atlas Invest, and it has proved to be a wise investment. “All the vineyards are around the estate, it’s quite a unique situation,” explained Speller. “Altitude was extremely important – vines planted at more than 500 metres above sea level – at the time no-one did that, there was very little viticulture at that highest part because they thought that Sangiovese would not ripen there, but in the next 30 years, with climate change, it will be vital.” As for what those
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Fine Wine
