Rosso di Montalcino DOC

Giovanni Neri founded this estate in 1971, and it was his son Giacomo who made the deliberate choice to propagate a proprietary Sangiovese Grosso clone bred from the Cerretalto vineyard across all seven estate sites — meaning even the Rosso di Montalcino carries the same genetic backbone as the wine that earned Italy's first perfect 100-point score from Wine Spectator. The Rosso draws from multiple Montalcino sites spanning galestro marl at 270–480 m a.s.l., soils rich in iron, magnesium, and eroded rock that compress the berry and sharpen the fruit's definition without sacrificing flesh. In the cellar, manual bunch selection, optical berry sorting, and spontaneous fermentation in open-topped truncated conical vats proceed without added yeasts; punch-downs at controlled temperature extract colour and structure without brutality. Twelve months in wood — shorter than any Brunello tier — preserves the primary fruit energy that the longer-aged cuvées deliberately sacrifice for complexity. The 2020 vintage is notable for a specific reason: Cerretalto was not produced, and its fruit was redirected into the White Label Brunello, concentrating the estate's top-site material upward in the hierarchy and leaving the Rosso to express the broader multi-vineyard blend with unusual purity. Drink 2023–2028.