Sanguineto

Poderi Sanguineto is Dora Forsoni’s 50-hectare family estate in Montepulciano in southern Tuscany. Dora started working in the vineyard alongside her father back in 1968. He taught her how to tend their old vines of Prugnolo Gentile (the Montepulciano variant of Sangiovese), Mammolo, Canaiolo and Nero Toscano—organically farmed always—and how to make very traditional wines. But he sold off most of the fruit in bulk; Dora scrapped that practice in 1997 and began bottling Sanguineto wines for the first time.

Dora walks and works in the vines all day every day and has a very keen eye and confident touch. There are zero chemicals used here and the soils are worked up to 3 times per year. Dora even revitalizes very old vines by cutting them off at their base and allowing a new vine to grow from the old trunk, a very old-fashioned and rare local practice; any brand-new plantings are selection massale. Organic olive trees (harvested for the pressing of oil) and wildlife (harvested for the dinner table) abound in the vineyard. 

Dora’s wines, like their maker, are not shy. They are earthy, robust and expressive, with a striking purity that is so rare in Montepulciano wines today. Sanguineto is truly singular.