2021 Podere Montale Peposo Rosso Toscano 750 ml

Say “Super Tuscan” and most people picture a triple-digit price tag and a decade in the cellar. The Podere Montale Peposo is the friendlier side of that world—a Sangiovese-led Tuscan red, rounded out with a little Cabernet and Merlot, that the estate makes as its easygoing, drink-now bottle. No waiting, no ceremony.

It comes from Montecucco, the stretch of Sangiovese country on the volcanic slopes of Monte Amiata, just west of Montalcino. Same grape, same heartland, neighboring hills. Because Montecucco made its name a generation later than its famous neighbor, the wines here still tend to fly under the radar.

Podere Montale is a young estate in the picture-postcard village of Seggiano, where the Val d’Orcia gives way to the Amiata slopes. The vines grow on clay shot through with galestro, the crumbly local schist that lends the region’s reds their savory lift and freshness.

Then there’s the name. Peposo—Italian for “peppery”—is one of Tuscany’s oldest and best stories. Six centuries ago, the kiln workers of Impruneta, just south of Florence, would pack cheap cuts of beef into terracotta pots with garlic, red wine, and fistfuls of black pepper, then set them at the mouths of the furnaces where they fired their bricks. Slow-cooked all day beside the flames, the tough meat turned meltingly tender.

When Filippo Brunelleschi was raising the great dome of Florence’s cathedral, he tired of his crew climbing down for long, wine-soaked lunches. So he had the peposo—and the wine—hauled straight up to the scaffolding, feeding the men who built the most famous roofline in the world. The dish still turns up in Florentine trattorias today.

The wine lives up to its namesake. Expect cherry and wild strawberry up front, a leafy lick of oregano and pencil shaving, and a crack of black pepper on the finish, all framed by chalky, energetic tannins. Fermented and raised entirely in steel, it keeps its focus on fruit and freshness rather than wood.

Pour it alongside a peppered steak, a braise, or a Sunday ragù and it slots right in. Podere Montale may be writing its first chapters, but the Peposo already tastes like it knows exactly where it comes from.