2021 Fattoria Le Pupille Poggio Valente
“Fabulous… I love its total class”
This is one we offered last month but I’m just realizing now we never listed the price - oops! One of the strong points about his wine is its price. It's a wine that over the last several vintages has become one of our best selling Italian wines largely because it offers such bang for the buck.
2021 in Tuscany was one of those vintages where it was the job of the winemaker was to simply get out of the way and let the wines make themselves. Many estates are turning out some of the best wines they have ever produced. The warm summer allowed the grapes to be harvested at peak maturity, resulting in a wine bursting with flavor and an absolute pleasure to drink. It's easy to see why this 94 point powerhouse has developed such a following - it’s easily one of the best values in all of Italy.
The 2021 Poggio Valente offers great concentration, lively tannins with excellent mouth feel - on a finish that just does not want to quit. Many of you told me how great last year’s vintage was drinking, and I do agree, but experience tells me this one deserves at least 3 years in the cellar, and 5 would probably be better. There is more to unfold from with this wine. My suggestion is to buy a few for drinking in the near term, but please do buy a few and forget about them for a couple of years - at least! I’m telling you you will be happy you did. Wine will be arriving in April
The 2021 Poggio Valente is fabulous. I can't remember tasting a Poggio Valente with this much finesse. Rose petal, spice and red cherry fruit open in an effusive bouquet that is immediately appealing. Silky, medium in body and gracious, with finesse to burn, the 2021 shows what is possible within the appellation. I love its total class.
- Antonio Galloni, 94
STORY
Fattoria Il Pupille calls itself “a modern and entrepreneurial viticultural reality,” “a heterogenous reality,” and a “mosaic property,” resembling the varied hues of Tuscan vineyards in autumn.
While we’re all contemplating what “heterogenous reality” means, we can speak to one of the tile pieces in the “mosaic property” of winegrower Elisabetta Geppetti, which is Poggio Valenti; a single vineyard of about 35 acres, near the Maremma coast, close to the village of Pereta.
Elisabetta and her daughter orchestrate aesthetics and quality in a grand Tuscan style, but with no adversity to modern technology. For example, they have embraced optical selection, which is an advanced optical sorting machine with cameras picking grapes based on programmed properties like size, color, ripeness, etc. Nothing but perfect grapes are allowed!
Poggio Valenti’s soils appear totally sandy, but a subterranean mix of sandstone with clay help conserve moisture for those arid summers.
“With Poggio Valenti we started a kind of revolution starting with the 2012 vintage,”Elisabetta says. This meant eliminating the Super Tuscan Merlot in the blend, although the wine remains an IGT Toscana.“We decided to completely change the style of this wine, making the decision to focus on 100% Sangiovese while also experimenting with the wine’s maturation in wood, adjusting the size of the casks.”
They used mostly French oak, settling on “big tonneaux” of 500 and 600 litres, about 50% new. Elisabetta thinks of verticality, elegance, and freshness when making her wine, carefully monitoring the maceration of about a month’s length, all in stainless steel.
Considering its painstaking production, this wine represents an amazing value.
