2016 Petrolo Galatrona Val d'Arno Sopra Tuscany 750 ml

Dual Super Tuscan Secrets

As it is with Napa Cabernet, the trick to stocking up on the best Super Tuscan reds from Italy comes down to knowing names. If we’re talking Napa, “Phelps” or “Dalla Valle” on a label is a guarantee of quality. With Super Tuscans, it’s about knowing who to know beyond Ornellaia, Sassicaia, and Tignanello. Like when we see “Petrolo” on a label, for instance, our eyes grow wide—Petrolo was our little secret for a time, and a Wine Access member favorite, but word continues to spread.

Over the last half-dozen years, Lucia Bazzocchi Sanjust’s Petrolo has become one of the most critically decorated estates in Tuscany. Apart from its marquis-named counterparts, Petrolo delivers all the pleasure and high-scoring critical praise vintage after vintage, but for substantially less money. Today, we’re featuring the rare opportunity to secure his best bottling from the 2016 vintage: the 98-point flagship Petrolo “Galatrona.”

Wine Spectator has called Petrolo’s top cuvée, Galatrona, the “Le Pin of Tuscany” and with dual 98-point scores for the 2016 vintage from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate and James Suckling, the longtime Wine Spectator European bureau chief, Galatrona has reached new heights. This full-bodied Merlot “offers thick layering and deep intensity,” raves the Advocate, “starting off with luscious dark chocolate on one side and ending with fragrant white truffle on the far end of its long aromatic trajectory. You get plummy fruit, spice, sweet tobacco and tilled earth packed tight in between,” on and on. 

We first visited Petrolo in the fall of 2013. Located in the Valdarno Superiore, in the center of a triangle made by Florence to the north, Siena to the southwest, and Arezzo to the southeast, Petrolo is the only notable estate in the neighborhood. But as you pull into the property and begin climbing—and climbing—you quickly get a sense of the passion and resolve that went into the planting and upkeep of this world-class vineyard.

The estate is sprawling—a 672-acre mix of forest and hills—just 11 percent of which is planted to Sangiovese and Bordeaux varieties. And while Petrolo also produces other explosively delicious wines—their Galatrona bottling regularly scores in the high 90s—it’s the Torrione that has our heart. It is a classic Super Tuscan that explodes from the glass with the kind of fruit you cannot help but adore right away, but that is still structured by the kind of tannins and acidity that promise another five to seven years of evolution in the cellar.