A new addition to Sanguineto's small line-up as of 2020 and an outlier in a few ways: it is their only IGT wine; their only one from a young planting (2017) of Prugnolo Gentile, the local clone of Sangiovese; and the only monovarietal wine. As for vignaiola Dora Forsoni's entire vineyard, the farming is organic and all work is done meticulously with her hands. And as for the other wines in this cellar, the berries are destemmed but kept largely whole; the fermentation is spontaneous with native yeasts in concrete tanks; and the aging is about a year in a mix of French and Slavonian oak botti. Floods of wildflower, sweet lilac and cedar, saddle and suede, peony, herbal notes. Palate is playful with loads of verve, cherry and Tuscan countryside.
Sanguineto farmer/winemaker Dora Forsoni is widely considered to be one of the wise old sages of modern-day Tuscany’s winemaking community. An avid hunter who ‘hates wasting bullets’ and butchers all her kills, Dora, now well into her 70s, still manages and maintains each and every vine on the property alone, only allowing outsiders on her land during the busy weeks of harvest. However, despite her rugged exterior, she might be one of the funniest, warmest, friendliest, brutally honest and passionate people in the business. Forever rebelling against modernization, bureaucracy, and industrial farming practices, her timeless, unadulterated, and deeply satisfying wines are the direct result of one woman’s dogged commitment to purity and tradition. Legend has it that Dora’s property was once the site of some of the most brutally violent battles between the Etruscans and Romans, leaving the land so inundated with the blood of fallen soldiers that it was dubbed Sanguineto ('bloody'). Today, Sanguineto is a far less barbaric place (Dora’s rabbit hunting prowess aside), and a land hallmarked by the intensely red clay/sand soils that Montepulciano has become known for.