Best Sauvignon in Italy
This is the recognition that Daniele Cernilli's Guida Essenziale ai Vini d'Italia 2024 awarded to our Poggio del Crine 2018: a wine from forty-year-old vines that represents the crowning achievement of a lifetime's work, ours, around Sauvignon blanc, a grape variety as noble as it is delicate.
Planted at Tenuta Montauto in an act of pure prescience by my grandfather Enos, those ancient plants now become the truest manifestation of the relationship between the land, the Maremma, and the man who inhabits it.
Montauto Estate
Tenuta Montauto is my life project; an existential philosophy before that of winemaking rooted in a defiled, remote and wild territory: the hinterland of the last Tuscan Maremma just before it becomes Lazio. It is the place where I grew up, amidst the oak, cork and turkey oak forests that now also host our vineyards, all of them hilly. From here, although the naked eye has no inkling of it, the sea is breathed in a dry, perennial breeze and in the red earth, studded with quartz and slate. It was here that I returned after my studies in economics, here that I rooted my existence made of counter-intuitive and counter-current choices such as that of insisting on a variety as noble as it is delicate as Sauvignon blanc, at a time of great enthusiasm for the indigenous grape variety.
A choice that rewards the farsightedness of my grandfather Enos in whose name a destiny was truly written, the same destiny that has rewarded us, today, with the recognition as 'Best Sauvignon in Italy' that Daniele Cernilli's Essential Guide 2024 awarded to our Poggio del Crine 2018. A young wine - we are just at its first vintage - but ambitious, the child of a very long gestation - to make it we had to wait until the vines were more than 40 years old - and a long refinement of 3 years: elements that make it the exact manifestation of the relationship between the land, the Maremma, and the man who inhabits it.
Riccardo Lepri
Grapes
100% Sauvignon (from the first 8 rows of Enos)
Vineyards
The grapes come from the first rows planted by Grandpa Enos on the Crine di Montauto. Vineyards over 45 years old, in a phase of balanced natural vegetative equilibrium: the production, naturally low, results in very small bunches and very concentrated in juice and aromas. Managed with organic method, the vineyard is only treated with copper and sulphur and fertilised with stable manure. The soils, predominantly clayey and rich in iron, quartz and slate are located 200 m above sea level and 10 km from the coast. sea level and 10 km from the coast, in a unique and unspoilt terroir characterised by the wind that always blows from the sea and significant temperature excursions.
Plant
High spurred cordon to ensure shading of the grapes and to benefit from the cooling provided by sea breezes.
Vinification
The grapes, before being pressed, are put one night in cold storage in order to have a greater extraction of aromas and to avoid oxidation. We then proceed with the soft pressing of the whole bunch. This is followed by decanting for 36 hours and fermentation in stainless steel at a controlled temperature of 16°C. All the energy used during the production process comes from renewable sources.
Wine
An intense yellow colour, or rather antique gold, is a presage of a progressive and dynamic nose progressive and dynamic, statuesque in the definition of the many aromatic saliencies aromatic saliencies that inhabit it and range from dried fruit (almonds) to dehydrated dehydrated citrus peel, passing through lemon leaf. The whole to compose more choral notes of old-fashioned pastry, biscuits, sugared almonds and marzipan, anticipating a sip of creamy, imposing and concentrated and concentrated, enlivened by the hardness of a stentorian savouriness softened by the imposing glyceric counterpart.
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