Three Montefalco Sagrantino wines superimposed over an Umbrian landscape

First-Taste Guide to Montefalco Sagrantino

UPDATED: Like Tannins? Good. This Wine is For You.

12 min read

Who makes Italy’s biggest, brashest and most assertive red wine? It’s hard to argue that anyone comes close to the singular wines made from Sagrantino in and around Umbria’s medieval village of Montefalco. When Montefalco Sagrantino first crosses your palate, you’ll probably nod your head and say “only in Italy.” With its dark fruit and embrace of bitter, sour and umami flavors — not to mention those wooly tannins — you’ll know you’re drinking a true original.

A wine like this feels like it comes from somewhere, not just anywhere.

This article has long been one of the most trafficked pieces of content on Opening a Bottle. Sagrantino leaves a powerful first impression … the kind that will make you demand answers. So it is perhaps no surprise this piece has generated so many views over the years. When I first got a hit of that truffle-meets-leather aroma many years ago, I, too, dove head-first into research mode seeking some direction.

I will be honest: my palate these days is more inclined to light, lean and elegant red wines. A personal decision to cut red meat from my diet has certainly limited the opportunities to open such a big, bold wine. Nonetheless, this guide was due for an update, and after coordinating a tasting of six new releases as well as some aged examples, I’ve come to the conclusion that Sagrantino is — even to this palate — one of Italy’s rarest jewels.

If you are going to be bold, massively structured and so rich as to inspire the word “chewy,” you need to bring aromas and flavors to the table that are unique. And in Montefalco Sagrantino, we have that is spades: black truffle or porcini earthiness, leather, sometimes spice, sometimes anise seed, and a whole spectrum of the darkest berry fruit you can imagine. A wine like this feels like it comes from somewhere, not just anywhere.

Let’s have a first-taste look, shall we?

View over the vineyards of the Montefalco region of Umbria.
Montefalco’s vineyard landscape with a backdrop of the Sibillini Mountains. ©Consorzio Tutela Vini Montefalco

3 Reasons to Try Montefalco Sagrantino

  1. You Love Barolo, But Wish It Hit Harder – Yes, Sagrantino resembles Sangiovese in appearance, but its tannic grip and earthy flavor profile is more reminiscent of Barolo or the Aglianico wines of Campania’s Taurasi. If your day at the office requires a little more firepower than Barolo can provide, reach for Montefalco Sagrantino.
  2. You Are Cooking with Mushrooms or Serving Truffles – Sagrantino’s wild, foresty aromas often recall mushrooms. Hearty sauces and dishes with porcini or morel mushrooms partner very well with this tannic red. Better yet: shaved truffle on top, if you are living large.
  3. You Want to Piss Off Your Dentist – Sagrantino is not for lightweights. It might not even be for middleweights. This is a wine that blasts the palate with volume, tannin, acidity and wild waves of flavors. While it mellows some with decanting — and certainly finds refinement with age — you’ll still feel it on your teeth for hours. The payoff comes with those uniquely earthy flavors.

What is Montefalco Sagrantino?

The Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG is a protected designation of origin for varietal Sagrantino wines made in a zone surrounding Umbria’s village of Montefalco. The DOCG covers dry red wines (the most popular style, covered here) as well as sweet dessert wines made in the passito method. The former outnumbers the latter by nine to one. See below for aging and oak requirements, or read the PDF disciplinare if you’re fluent in Google Translate.

The Montefalco Rosso DOC allows for blending of Sagrantino with Sangiovese and other permitted grapes, and as a result, it yields a rather different wine. In fact, the codified blending formula for Montefalco Rosso calls for a minimum of 60-80% Sangiovese, with only 25% maximum Sagrantino. For these wines, producers use Sagrantino as a seasoning element, lending its bitter and earthy edges as well as tannins, to the overall wine.

For this article, we’ll focus only on the dry red wines of Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG.

Ripe Sagrantino grapes on the vine in Montefalco, Italy
Grapes awaiting the right moment for harvest in Montefalco. As a late-ripening variety, Sagrantino is usually not harvested until the middle of October. © Consorzio Tutela Vini Montefalco

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About the Wine & Its Appellation

This first thing to know about Montefalco Sagrantino is that it hails from Umbria, the only province in Italy that does not share its border with a foreign country or the sea. Umbria is every bit as gorgeous as Tuscany, with ancient hilltop towns such as Assisi, Todi, Norcia and Orvieto garnering the most touristic attention. When it comes to wine, however, Umbria produces less than one-fifth the amount as Tuscany, as wheat, corn and sunflowers have historically been more vital to the agricultural economy. Of Umbria’s vineyard plantings, less than 10% are devoted to Sagrantino, yet Montefalco Sagrantino is often seen by professionals as the area’s most prestigious and unique wine of origin.

The town of Montefalco has poetically been called the “balcony of Umbria” for its hilltop views of the countryside. It lies south of Assisi, at the end of a chain of hills that run parallel to the towering Sibillini Mountains to the east. Three other towns in this range of hills — Bevanga, Gualdo Cattaneo, Giano dell’Umbria and Castel Ritaldi — can make Montefalco Sagrantino. The possibility for terroir distinctions between these villages is high, but given (a) how small quantities have been over the years, (b) the relative newness of this style of wine, (c) the explosion of new plantings in recent years and (d) the lack of geological mapping that’s been done, we don’t quite yet have as good a grip on these terroir nuances as we do in places like Brunello di Montalcino, Chianti Classico or Barolo. Consider this an exciting frontier.

History

As noted, Montefalco Sagrantino the dry red wine is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically, vinification techniques limited a winemaker’s options for managing Sagrantino’s tannins, so its legacy is more closely associated with the passito sweet wines as well as blending in other dry red wines.

The grape however, is believed to be quite ancient. Everybody’s favorite wino naturalist from antiquity — Pliny the Elder — wrote about a tannic grape from Umbria called “Hirtiola,” which many scholars believe is either a reference to modern-day Sagrantino, or one of its ancestors. Written records of a sagrantino do not appear until 1598.

Wine writer and grape genetics expert Ian d’Agata notes that the name change to Sagrantino either refers to a feast (sagra) or “wine of mass” (sacrestia). This makes sense on many levels, including the fact that the grape’s wealth of polyphenols would have guarded against spoilage, making it ideal for communion wine.

First taste guide to Sagrantino Montefalco, Montefalco, Italy
The town square in Montefalco, Umbria. (Stock photo)

As a stand-alone fine wine, Montefalco Sagrantino made its “debut” in the late 1970s, when it earned a DOC distinction. In 1992, both the dry Montefalco Sagrantino and Sagrantino Passito Montefalco were elevated to DOCG status, the highest regulatory standing in Italy.

The recent history of Montefalco has been dramatic. In a fairly recent report from Montefalco, my colleague Alder Yarrow (an exceptionally gifted wine writer, give him a follow if you haven’t already) noted that in the last 15 years there has been extraordinary growth for the appellation: from less than a dozen producers farming 200 acres in 2010, to 70 commercial wineries farming 1,000 acres in 2023. While my tasting was limited to some of the more established estates, friend and fellow wine writer and illustrator Meg Maker has a wonderful story on the movement that you should check out.

The Grape

What makes Sagrantino so distinctive? For one, it is a thick-skinned grape, and those skins carry higher than average levels of polyphenols. It’s the wealth tannins, however, that always steal the headline. According to Ian d’Agata in his indispensable tome Native Wine Grapes of Italy, the issue isn’t so much the nature of the tannins, but rather than volume of tannins. Because of this, we often personify Montefalco Sagrantino with words like stubborn or unyielding, but I found this observation to be very helpful when re-tasting some of these wines, especially alongside another famously tannic red wine, Barolo. The nature of the tannins between these two is quite different. The tannins of youthful Barolo felt a little more astringent to me, while Montefalco Sagrantino’s tannins felt slightly smoother but threefold in their density. There is just more to chew on with Sagrantino. (Fortunately, this is what decanters were invented for).

Sagrantino grows best in soils rich with clay or loam, preferring a little bit of sand or limestone for drainage. It requires ample sunlight and heat to reach ripeness levels that counter the tannins.

Plantings beyond this slice of Umbria are rare and mostly experimental, confined to single wineries here and there in Australian and California. If you are going to encounter this grape, more than nine times out of 10, it will be from Montefalco.

The Winemaking

One of the real benefits of producing wine in this part of Umbria is the biodiversity and polyculture that surround it. As the climate warms and weather patterns become more volatile, this can be a tremendous asset. Forest and ground cover can help retain nutrients and water while guarding against erosion, and there is some buffering against maladies as well. However, since Sagrantino is a late-ripening variety, it can be more susceptible to devastating late-season rains. The margin for error is still slim.

Because of their structural requirements, Montefalco Sagrantino requires oak maturation and aging at the cellar before bottling. The Consorzio Vini Tutela Montefalco mandates a minimum 33 months of aging, of which 12 months must be spent in an oak barrel. (Four of those months must be in bottle). This being Italy, a more “traditional” producer will embrace larger oak casks for this maturation, while a more “modern” producer will employ smaller oak barrique barrels. However, since Sagrantino does not lack for tannin, used barrels which no longer impact any woody tannins are better.

Red vineyards in Montefalco Umbria, central Italy
The crimson cast of the vineyards near Montefalco, Umbria … a remarkable sight, even for non-wine lovers. ©Consorzio Tutela Vini Montefalco

Your First Taste

There are “age-worthy wines,” and then there are “age necessary wines.” Sagrantino is the latter, and with this wine, the sweet spot where the tannins are polished enough to make sense of the wine’s story begins with the eight- to 10-year mark after vintage.

Sometime down the road, I’d like to cross paths again with Perticaia’s 2016.

One of the things I like about these wines at home is how you can stretch a bottle out over a full week. Given their endurance and persistence, I’ve had good luck enjoying a couple of glasses of Montefalco Sagrantino the night I open the bottle, then — after recorking it and chilling it — enjoying another glass later in the week. This is a great way to get a feel for how these wines might evolve in the cellar; its not the same thing at all, but if you have a few bottles to hold for a few years, I’d recommend doing this with the first one you open, just to gauge the rewards you might enjoy with patience.

But do take note: these wines are very specific contextually. They pair with mostly rich, fatty foods, and tend to overwhelm lighter fare. Drinking a glass on its own without a meal is a rather hardcore way to drink wine.

For this guide, I sampled wines from Arnaldo Caprai, Còlpetrone, Perticaia, Antonelli, Cantina Fratelli Pardi, Tenute Lunelli and Bocale. This is not meant to be a comprehensive tasting report; I was looking for a good introductory wine for beginners — that ideal “first taste.” Any of these three wines qualify. Look for others to appear in our Wines to Admire section if you are a paying subscriber.

A quick note on Arnaldo Caprai, who is often noted as the benchmark estate of Montefalco. I tasted both the 2014 “25 Anni” and the 2014 “Collepiano” Montefalco Sagrantino (these are slightly aged versions; the current releases are the 2020 and 2021 respectively). Both were exceptional, although I think for a first taste, it is better to have a starting point that is not at the tippy top. Form a frame of reference first with one of these three wines, then check out Arnaldo Caprai. The same advice goes for Paolo Bea, another benchmark producer, but more on the “natural wine” side of things.

2018 Cantina Fratelli Pardi "Sacrantino" Montefalco Sagrantino
2018 Cantina Fratelli Pardi “Sacrantino” Montefalco Sagrantino ©Kevin Day/Opening a Bottle

2018 Cantina Fratelli Pardi “Sacrantino” Montefalco Sagrantino

I normally don’t lead off a “first taste” recommendation with a single-vineyard wine, but in this case, the 2018 vintage of Cantina Fratelli Pardi’s “Sacrantino” Montefalco Sagrantino (★★★★ 3/4) embodies what we ought to look for in an initial impression.

Sourced from the estate’s Pietrauta vineyard, the wine does what Sagrantino does best: it flips the script on what is primary and what is tertiary. Here the lead protagonist is a porcini mushroom-like earthiness, supported by bitter edges (like anise seed), and a spicy character, all before you sense any fruit. For some wines, that lack of initial fruit would be a problem, but that’s the thing with Montefalco Sagrantino: when these aromas and flavors are in balance, you need little else.

Another intriguing element at play here is a sense of florality: give this wine aeration and a good two hours of oxygen and waves of violets emerge from the glass. Perhaps in a few years, the buffed-sandpaper tannins will mellow further, but this wine is drinking beautifully right now. For me, this wine held its form incredibly well over a full week of being open and re-corked.

       

2018 Antonelli Montefalco Sagrantino

2018 Antonelli Montefalco Sagrantino

One of the oldest continuously operated wineries in the appellation, Antonelli is a superb ambassador for the region. They’re also a member of FIVI, Italy’s independent winemaker association which is always a hallmark of quality in my book. With their 2018 Montefalco Sagrantino (★★★★ 3/4), a first-taste drinker will not only get Sagrantino’s iconic tertiary aromas and flavors, but a sense for how the region’s wines can develop minerality, too. This phenomenon is often hidden or obscured by such a tannic presence, but not here. It seems to carry the finish for a little longer length, while those densely-packed, wooly tannins offer a sense of liveliness.

If you visit Montefalco, stop by this winery for a taste of the cold cuts they make; their oak forest is used as roaming grounds for a breed of pig that they raise as part of an integrated farm. You love to see it.

           

2016 Perticaia Montefalco Sagrantino
2016 Perticaia Montefalco Sagrantino ©Kevin Day/Opening a Bottle

2016 Perticaia Montefalco Sagrantino

This wine is listed third only because it is the oldest vintage of the three.

“So much darkness and grace,” I wrote in my raw tasting notes with this wine. What do I mean by darkness? Well, obviously the color of Sagrantino — always an inky purple — puts one into a shadowy grove with their adjectives, but Perticaia’s semi-aged 2016 Montefalco Sagrantino (★★★★ 3/4) really goes all-in, with notes redolent of black truffle, black raspberry, black cherry and a twist of anise seed. The best part for me was that this wine seemed to have reached an apex for silkiness, too. There are still a lot of tannins supporting this wine — enough to call it “chewy” — but they feel measured and refined. This was the wine that got me to buy into the promise of aged Sagrantino. Sometime down the road, I’d like to cross paths again with Perticaia’s 2016.

The current release of this wine is the 2018, although the 2016 appears to still be more prevalent in U.S. stores according to wine-searcher.com.

   

About the Ratings

★★★★★ – The Top Tier
★★★★ 3/4 – A Thrilling Wine
★★★★ 1/2 – Solid and Recommended
★★★★ 1/4 – Average
★★★★ – Indistinctive
< ★★★★ – No Point in Writing About It

Learn more about the philosophy behind these ratings.

How We Rate Wine

 

Note: The wines featured in this article were provided as samples by the Consorzio Tutela Vini Montefalco as well as a PR agency and an importer. Learn more about our editorial policy.

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