Val di Suga Brunello di Montalcino 2018

Val di Suga’s history began in 1969, when a company owned by Aldo Moro bought agricultural land to the north of Montalcino and built a manufacturing and retail business on it. Previously used for forage, these lands were gradually made into vineyards as they changed hands a number of times until, in 1982, Val di Suga began making wines in its own winemaking cellars. The first vintage to be sold was Val di Suga Brunello Riserva 1977. The company’s viticultural and oenological growth was rapid.

These were the years in which the denomination’s success and expansion began. It was this and constant hard work and commitment in both wine growing and making, that made Val di Suga begin to stand out in the Montalcino wine panorama. A vineyard in a lakeside position in front of the estate buildings was chosen for its special characteristics to produce to first Brunello selection, Vigna del Lago. The first vintage produced for this cru was 1983.

In 1988 the company bought one of the most famous of Montalcino’s single vineyard sites, Spuntali, around 15 hectares of vineyard acknowledged by all to be one of the best Brunello terroir zones, on a south-west facing site. Just a few years later, in 1994, the Angelini Group arrived bringing fresh impetus to Val di Suga – by then award-winning and internationally recognized for the top quality of its wines — in terms of important viticultural investment and modernization and enlargement of the wine making buildings. These were the years of internal ‘rivalry’ between the company’s two single vineyard wines, Vigna Spuntali (first vintage produced and sold : 1988) — from the southern most of the denomination’s vineyards — and Vigna del Lago — a lakeside vineyard washed by a lake at the foot of Montalcino’s northern slopes. It was a rivalry which saw first one and then the other of the two star Brunellos in pride of place in wine sector guides and international points systems always at ultra-high levels and internationally famous.

But the truly great intuition came in 1999, when the opportunity for a new acquisition took shape and a vineyard in the historic heart of the denomination, to the south east was bought: Poggio al Granchio. With Poggio al Granchio, Val di Suga acquired an element which marked it out from any other Montalcino estate. It became one of the few estates with vineyards on different hillside locations and the only producer to own vineyards on the three slopes best suited to top quality Brunello making. 55 hectares in total farmed to Sangiovese on three different slopes with different sun exposure and three geologically different soils.