2019 Tua Rita Giusto di Notri Toscana 750 ml

If you want to see an exclusive club, look at Super Tuscans that manage a 97-point score from The Wine Advocate. It’s where the excellent turns into the profound: The heady list of bottles is usually headlined by $200+ names like Solaia, Sassicaia, and Ornellaia—and the 2019 Tua Rita Giusto di Notri.

From a winery that manages to stay out of the spotlight—despite the huge splash it made in 2000 when Robert Parker gave one of their bottles his second-ever 100-point score for an Italian wine—this Cabernet-dominant blend is one of the most masterful examples of the genre we’ve tasted in the last few years. James Suckling also agreed, adding a 97-point score to the chorus of praise for this modern masterpiece.

In 1992, Rita Tua and husband Virgilio Bisti released their first wine, the Left Bank–inspired Giusto di Notri, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. The early vintages of this wine evinced the same character as today’s 2019 release: rich, sun-kissed opulence, streaked with a trademark iron-like minerality and salinity that evokes the vineyard’s silt-and-clay soils carried down from the metalliferous hills of the Val di Cornia.

For its value, Giusto di Notri is truly a best-in-class wine whose rewards will only become greater with time. Antonio Galloni argued as much, saying “I find so much to like in the budget friendly Rosso dei Notri and the Giusto di Notri, a wine that offers serious quality for the price.” For the cautious buyer determined to tune out the trends and hype, this is as close to a sure thing as it gets: full bodied, classic Tuscan nobility.