Tenuta Bellafonte’s Montefalco Rosso ‘Pomontino’ - named for the quaint village that overlooks the vineyard - sees a dominant dose of Sangiovese married with a small portion of Monteflaco’s powerhouse red grape staple, Sagrantino. The organically farmed (though not certified) fruit is harvested, with whole clusters (vs. destemmed berries) undergoing the early portion of fermentation, imbuing the juice with a lifted, aromatic punch while helping to dial back the encroachment of brawny tannins. Once fermentation is complete, the wine is transferred to large Slavonian casks for a full year followed by a further 6 months in bottle, helping to soften any rough edges. The cantina’s go-to table wine of sorts, the Pomontino offers a wonderfully elegant and dainty nose of pomegranate, redcurrant, sour cherry, bitter orange citrus and blackberry bush - leaves, fruit, bark, the works! A supple palate of more red cherry and juicy blood orange rolls forth, tempered with a distinctly sanguine, almost ferrous, the Pomontino’s fine grained tannins and effusive acidity providing welcome river banks to the fruit.
Fifteen years ago Peter Heilbron was the go-to managing director of Heineken's Italian subsidiary, guiding the mass-production and distribution of the company’s products throughout the country. After a professional lifetime spent in the corporate sphere, Heilbron began to grow weary of boardroom drudgery, endless business travel, and personnel politics, finding himself yearning for a simpler life. Forgoing the corner office, Heilbron tendered his resignation and along with his wife Sabina, set out for the idyllic countryside of Umbria, purchasing a small plot of vines outside of Montefalco, in the department’s southwest corner. Though his early vintages were spent vinifying his wines in a rented cellar, 2010 saw the completion of Peter’s sleek, ‘eco-winery,’ the highly energy-efficient cantina modeled closely on that of long-time friend and Montalcino iconoclast Gianfranco Soldera. In the vineyards, Heilbron shuns chemical treatments, using seaweed and plant extracts as a kind of vine homeopathy, and in his cellar, he is equally exacting: at harvest, he leads the grape-sorting team, ferments his wines with wild yeasts and ages the wine in large, and predominantly older Slavonian oak casks, with no fining or filtration, and only a dash of sulfur at bottling.