2015 Giodo Rosso di Toscana 750 ml

“Montalcino’s Best-Kept Secret”

Wine Spectator’s 100-point winemaker, Carlo Ferrini, has a small private vineyard called Giodo, which the magazine suggests may be “Montalcino’s best-kept secret.” From this impeccable site, he’s produced a 100-point Brunello, made from select grape bunches off each vine. Then, one week after picking those grapes for his Brunello, Ferrini harvests the rest of this prized fruit to make his Rosso di Toscana. This 2015 Giodo Rosso di Toscana earned 97-points from James Suckling who found it “linear and dense.” Meet the pinnacle of Tuscan rosso for just $59.99 per bottle. Highly recommended.

When the two-time Wine Enthusiast Winemaker of the Year finishes his day job making wines for Brancaia, Casanova di Neri, Fonterutoli Mazzei, and Talenti, he escapes to his hidden Podere Giodo site and works his magic crafting his Sangiovese into dense and expressive Tuscan gems.

A few years back, Wine Spectator clued the world into Carlo Ferrini’s “under-the-radar passion project,” Podere Giodo, which is tucked outside the tiny village of Sant’Angelo in Colle. Ferrini purchased the Tuscan property in 2002 when it was just 25 acres of “woods and wheat,” and he is discreet about it because he knows that his 30 clients throughout Italy — Brunello heavyweights like Casanova di Neri, Brancaia, Mazzei, and Talenti — might not appreciate their own consulting winemaker adding yet another competitor to the mix.

Ferrini saw huge potential in the property’s mineral-laced slopes, which face southeast and are shaded from the hot summer sun. Long a proponent of improving wine through vineyard investment, Ferrini put his money where his mouth was, planting 15 different Sangiovese clones on seven acres.

The same organically-farmed fruit that supplied Ferrini’s 100-point wine supplies his Rosso di Toscana, which just sees less time in oak and in the bottle than the Brunello. The estate is so young that Ferrini must steal away to a corner of Castello Romitorio’s winery to make his wine. He follows a gentle winemaking course whose aim he sums up in three words: “Elegance, elegance, elegance.”

Jonathan Cristaldi

Editor-in-Chief, Wine Access

Contributing Writer, Food & Wine