My good friend is heading to Montalcino for his Honeymoon in early September and is looking for a few great winery recommendations! He has done some online work - but is hopeful that this community can help uncover some high quality and less visited places (versus looking at highly rated wineries online).
So far, he has a list of the following:
Podere Il Cocco
Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona
Altesino
Tenute Silvio Nardi
Casanova di Neri
Poggio Antico
Azienda Agricola Patrizia Cencioni Solaria
Would be curious if there are thoughts on the list above (ones to skip / must visit)? Any additional recommendations would be much appreciated!
Additionally, if anyone has recommendations or suggestions for good Tuscan whites (San Gimignano or Chianti regions?), that would be super helpful as well.
They are staying at Castello Banfi and will have a car so able to get around.
I visited Le Ragnaie a couple weeks back. Beautiful spot on the hill 5 mins from the castle. Easy visit. I also visited Altesino and would recommend as well.
Tell him to have lunch at Locanda Demetra!
We did dinner at DF first night in town. Loved finding Emidio Pepe Trebbiano on the list for $38E. And spaghetti with fresh- in-that-day black truffle was pretty excellent. Good spot!
Collemattoni has great views and overlooks Banfi. Their wines are fantastic. They should have some back vintages too for earlier consumption if he wants to bring some home. They shipped a case for us at around $100.
If he loves Altesino wines, you can get good deals at the winery so it is worth a tasting but the tour is trash and costs $ which is not waived with purchase.
We were in Montalcino in May and did a few tastings at some of the more well known producers but also tried out a few smaller places. The most unique and memorable was Nostra Vida (Home - NostraVita Montalcino). The views are incredible, the wine is really good and the tour is truly one of a kind. It is a family operation and the patriarch of the family is an artist. His work is all over the property.
We also really liked Podere Le Ripi (https://www.podereleripi.com/) and would recommend that. The tour was a real learning experience.
Copying some suggestions I posted last year to give your friend some other ideas near Montalcino:
The nearby Val D’Orcia is a very different landscape worth driving through. Pienza is nice, if also a bit touristy, but just outside the city, a stop at Endi Binzo will get you an expansive, but not expensive, “tagliere”(charcuterie and cheese platter) if you ask the nice person behind the counter. Not really a restaurant, but they do have sit down space and they also have a great wine selection, and will sometimes have open bottles that you can order just a glass of. Not far from here, you could visit an incredible sculptor in clay, who started out making clay pots and diverged into something extraordinary - Ceramiche Sbarluzzi Pienza (go inside to see the really good stuff!). As others have mentioned the lunch with wine and tour at Avignonesi is also special. Enjoy!
I was just in Tuscany his month and will echo Chris S’ thoughts. Fuligni was excellent - very personal, great wine. Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona was fine but bland. More like a Napa retail type visit, and the wines were not as good either. I wish I had time for more visits!
For folks who have been more places, which would you recommend as small/personal vs. large/retail ?
Second the recommendation of Lisini. Great visit, and I think their wines are incredibly good in terms of quality and consistency, and for my money often give more pleasure than many of the more highly rated, flashier wines of the region. I would also recommend Il Poggione, based solely on the wine and having met the very friendly owner/winemaker at an event in Dallas a few years back…I haven’t visited the property, however).
Wouldn’t necessarily recommend Poggio Antico. We stopped in for a tasting and tour, which is fine, but rather formal/“corporate” and “by the books”…No chance you’ll wind up drunk after spending 5 hours with the winemaker and unexpectedly tasting barrel samples of 20 different wines. They also have a beautiful looking but very overpriced (and underwhelming) restaurant on the property which I would avoid. (All that said, their wines are often terrific and they had some especially impressive grappas to taste).
Regarding the prior post, that Pienza area is awesome! It is the best in Tuscany (and maybe in all of Italy) for driving, with gorgeous views everywhere. Pienza is quaint and nice (though touristy, as mentioned), but within a 30 minute drive are an incredible number of fun towns to visit…Monticchiello (only about 5 minutes away by car) has one of the best restaurants in the greater area, Osteria La Porta. You can easily visit Buonconvento (really pleasant, with a terrific pizzeria), San Quirico, Montepulciano (great restaurant called Acquachetta with group seating at fixed times and which specializes in giant steak Florentine cooked standing on its side in a wood-fired oven), Montalcino, Bagno Vignoni, and an amazing natural-springs swimming area in the woods called Fasso Bianco (just outside a town called Bagni San Filippo). There are also some really amazing monasteries worth visiting in the area (Abbey of Sant Antimo, and even more spectacular, the Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore). If I were going to have one place in all of Tuscany as a base of operations, it would be somewhere in this area of Val d’Orcia, close to Pienza, just because you have so many options within a 30-40 minute reach by car.
I visited BdM along with Chianti and Chianti Classico with my wife earlier this year. We had an absolute amazing tasting and tour at Badia a Passignano, about an hour and a half north of BdM. We got to taste Solaia, Guada al Tasso, Tignanello and the Badia a Passignano Chianti. I would put this on the radar if they are game to head north a little ways.
In BdM we visited Poggio Antico and had a tasting to ourselves. There was no tour, however the tasting was really nice and we ended up buying and shipping home half a case.
Ciacci Piccolomini was interesting to tour but the tasting itself is not one I would repeat. They poured us some American versions of wines they are exporting instead of the prime local wine. I wasn’t a fan.
Conti Costanti was our 3rd BdM stop and I really enjoyed the short tour and tasting. This is some REALLY good juice.
I was surprised that none of the wineries offered to pour their Reserve Brunello’s.
If your friend is looking for an experience vs. spectacle, I would recommend La Rasina.
Marco Mantengoli is kind of a one man show. It is an unfettered look into the life of someone who lives to make wine.
We were in Tuscany less than a month ago. I wrote up the trip as a CellarTracker story. It is lengthy but you might find our winery visits in Montalcino, Montepulciano and Chianti Classico helpful (including the photos).
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