Pieve Santa Restituta (Gaja), Brunello di Montalcino, Sugarille 2021

Pouring a deeper shade of red compared to the Rennina, the 2021 Brunello Di Montalcino Sugarille offers more depth on the nose, with Amarena cherries, fresh sage, lavender, and fresh earth. The palate is full-bodied yet weightless, with broader-shouldered tannins, balanced acidity, and savory tea leaf notes that carry through the long finish. It offers a lot of pleasure now, but it has the structure to age beautifully for another 15 years. Drink 2026-2041.

The 2021 Brunello di Montalcino Sugarille bursts from the glass with masses of thyme, incense, rosemary and cedar before giving way to dried strawberries. It presents a subtle inner sweetness and elegant texture, coming across as weighty yet refined, with polished red berry fruits swirling throughout and leaving a bitter licorice tinge to linger on the palate. A complex web of fine-grained tannins flexes on the palate as a tart wild berry saturation lingers incredibly long. The 2021 is youthfully dense and tightly wound today, with the balance for a long and glorious evolution.

A layered and complex expression, the Pieve Santa Restituta 2021 Brunello di Montalcino Sugarille combines dark fruit and oak with a deep plummy core accented by delicate hints of exotic spice. A precise mineral line runs through the wine and leads to fine, powdery tannins. The overall profile remains tightly wound at this young stage and will benefit from time to settle into a more integrated and complete expression. Sugarille is known to make wines with a subtle sweet-edged richness and supple yet structured tannins, shaped by soils rich in galestro and white clay that lend both age-worthy structure and mineral complexity. Production totals 9,500 bottles.