Cerbaiola (Salvioni) Rosso di Montalcino 2024

Rosso di Montalcino at Salvioni isn't a separate, lesser wine so much as a deliberate release valve for a family obsessed with only bottling Brunello when a vintage is truly worthy of it. Grown on the very same tiny four-hectare vineyard as their legendary Brunello — a plateau at roughly 420–440 metres southeast of Montalcino, on soils ranging from chalky schist to stony marl — the Rosso is made in years when the harvest, while still excellent, doesn't quite meet the exacting standard Giulio Salvioni and his daughter Alessia demand of their flagship wine, or in unusually abundant years when there's simply more fruit than the Brunello allocation requires. In particularly difficult vintages, like 2012, no Rosso is made at all — every grape goes into the Brunello instead. The wine follows the same meticulous, traditional process: 100% Sangiovese, fermented in temperature-controlled steel with vigorous pump-overs, then aged around twelve months in large Slavonian oak barrels — a fraction of the Brunello's minimum 36 months — with further time resting in bottle before release.

The result offers real insight into the Salvioni style at a fraction of the price and patience the Brunello demands: crushed rose petal, cherry, and violet meet spice, leather, and a fine mineral thread, with silky, polished tannins and a pretty, inner sweetness balanced against bright acidity. It's more immediate and approachable than its flagship sibling, yet still shows genuine concentration and length for the category — critics have repeatedly called it "elegance personified."