Casanova di Neri | Montalcino

Casanova di Neri is one of the defining family estates of Montalcino in southern Tuscany, renowned worldwide for crafting benchmark Italian red wine. Founded in 1971 by Giovanni Neri and now run by his son Giacomo alongside grandsons Giovanni and Gianlorenzo, the estate spans sixty-three hectares of vineyards split across seven distinct sites surrounding the historic hilltop town. Rather than relying on a single slope, these seven parcels - Fiesole, Poderuccio, Pietradonice, Cetine, Cerretalto, Spereta, and Leuta - capture the full geological diversity of the region. The vines root deep into a shifting patchwork of crumbly galestro marl, marine clay, limestone, volcanic tuff, and iron-rich red stones, sheltered by Mount Amiata to the south and cooled by breezes rolling in from the Tyrrhenian coast.

At the heart of the range sits Sangiovese - known locally as Brunello - cultivated from unique estate massal selections propagated from the family's oldest vines. Because each hillside parcel ripens at its own pace, the grapes are harvested entirely by hand before passing through an optical berry sorter that inspects every single grape, ensuring not a stem or unripe berry enters the vats. Built completely underground to maintain natural coolness without heavy air conditioning, the three-tier gravity-fed cellar allows the fruit to drop gently into open-top conical fermenters without mechanical pumping. This gentle handling extracts silky tannins and pure red cherry, blood orange, and wild violet aromatics, before the wines mature in either large traditional Slavonian oak casks or smaller French oak barrels across a lineup spanning vibrant Rosso di Montalcino, classic Brunello di Montalcino, and rich Super Tuscan blends.

The estate's modern reputation was forged by a bold piece of vineyard detective work that rewrote local tradition. When Giacomo Neri took over the winemaking following his father's passing in 1991, he set out to find a site capable of producing a fuller, more velvety style of Brunello. After studying soil maps, sunlight exposure, and warm Mediterranean wind tunnels in the south of the appellation, he bought and planted two wild hillsides - Cetine and Pietradonice - where nobody had ever dared grow vines before. He named the resulting wine Tenuta Nuova, meaning 'New Estate'. That pioneering gamble turned the estate into a global sensation: both Tenuta Nuova and the flagship Cerretalto amphitheatre vineyard have earned multiple hundred-point scores from international critics, with the 2001 Tenuta Nuova famously crowned Wine of the Year by Wine Spectator.

CASANOVA DI NERI