The best Siepi to date?
'Siepi, Fonterutoli's Merlot/Sangiovese blend, is absolutely gorgeous in 2018. Rich, pliant and creamy, Siepi offers all of the seductiveness of Merlot with the bright acids and grip of Sangiovese [...] The 2018 is positively stellar and also one of the very best editions in recent memory. Don’t miss it.' 97 points, Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com, February 2021
Siepi is the flagship wine of the Mazzei family and from an estate they've owned for 25 generations. It is made on some of the finest terroirs in Chiantishire. The Mazzei family clearly want it to be a luxury wine so it is made with little regard to budget constraints. And yet it still tastes great. I first ran into it by accident in the mid-noughties when I was a tourist in Castellina in Chianti and popped into their little tasting room, where they seemed more interested in flogging the artisanal soap than the wine. One of the bottles on tasting was the 2002 Siepi. Now this was a very average vintage with most wines lacking either concentration or interest, yet the Siepi had both and was a fine package with structure and intensity and certainly got my interest. I bought a few and it has aged extremely well. Subsequent vintages I have tasted and drunk have impressed even more, for their balance and drinkability; for their freshness and complexity.
It is of course the terroir that is allowed to make this wine. In other, more controlling hands this might not be the case. But the galestra shale and white limestone in a southwest-facing exposure at 250 or more metres help enormously with the freshness and minerality. 2018 is a beautiful and accessible vintage of presence and transparency, with a bit of pre-harvest rain helping to speed ripening and refreshing the vines. 2018 Siepi benefits from having a longer three week maceration on the skins, from a slightly shorter period in oak for the Sangiovese and definitely from a few months in concrete post-blending. All of this helps to accentuate the wonderful fruit quality, which derives from detailed organic farming.
Siepi's Merlot and Sangiovese complement one another perfectly, with Merlot's richness and suaveness both cut and enhanced by Sangiovese's structure and juicy, exuberant fruit. Together they make a quintessential Super-Tuscan with a real sense of place. And that place is in your cellar. /CW
Offered subject to confirmation; for shipment Autumn 2021
