2023 Petrolo Boggina B Val d’Arno di Sopra 750 ml

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, it is the only notable estate in the neighborhood. But as you pull into the property and begin climbing, you quickly get a sense of the passion and resolve that went—and goes—into the planting and upkeep of this world-class vineyard. 

The estate is a sprawling 672-acre mix of forest and hills, of which only 11 percent is planted to vines—the rest is kept wild to increase biodiversity. The Boggina Vineyard represents their oldest and most prized vines. 

Planted in 1952, these ancient Trebbiano vines hold a lineage that reaches back centuries—long before Super Tuscans or international varieties arrived on the scene. It’s the local Trebbiano clone of the Valdarno, celebrated for its quality since the 1300s, when it was regularly dispatched to the popes in Rome and the courts of Florence. For decades, Luca Sanjust, Petrolo's visionary owner, reserved these grapes exclusively for the estate's prized Vin Santo. 

But he recognized something more in them—a chance to revive the glory of Valdarno's white-wine heritage and create something entirely new. Sanjust applied Burgundian methods, pressing the grapes as whole bunches, fermenting them with native yeasts, then aging the wine on the lees for 15 months in French oak tonneaux. The marriage of those methods to this ancient Tuscan cultivar is revelatory.

Pale gold with a silvery gleam, this wine unfurls with aromas of delicate white peach, lemon curd, and pressed almond blossom, layered beneath wild chamomile, crushed hazelnut, and beeswax. On the palate, it's airy yet structured, with bright orchard fruit and citrus rind over a sleek core of salt-inflected minerality and subtle phenolic tension. Hints of brioche, dried herbs, and toasted almonds build to a lingering, chalky finish.

Despite the challenges of the 2023 vintage—frost, heavy rain, mildew, a summer heatwave, and hail that cut yields by 20%—the wine shows remarkable concentration and purity. This is Trebbiano reimagined, a white that stands with the world's greatest.