Sangiovese’s Signature

Talk about an awkward moment. It was 2009, and I had just started my first consulting project for a Tuscan winery. The new owners wanted to overhaul production. Over lunch at their restaurant, we tasted through their estate’s wines—blends of Sangiovese and international varietals like Cabernet Sauvignon and, especially, Merlot. As I sipped, one word kept coming to mind: muddy.

A dozen wines in, I was getting desperate. I wanted to find at least one I liked.

“And here we have the 1978!” the owner announced. “Just for kicks!” He laughed and poured two fingers of a translucent, brick-red wine into my glass.

One whiff, and I was transported. Away from the lineup of disappointing wines, from trying to please my clients, from the bustling restaurant, to some September day more than three decades earlier. The fragrant breeze that must have blown through the vineyards at harvest seemed to speak to me from the potpourri of dried roses in the glass. The wine was seamless, its aroma and flavor mirror images of one another. It tingled down my throat, saline and vibrant, unmistakably Sangiovese. How could this wine be so different from the others?

Later, I pored over the estate’s vineyard register. There, at the top of the list, was my answer:

“Poggetti, Sangiovese, 1970.”

The miraculous 1978 was pure Sangiovese, per forza—because Poggetti was the only vineyard the estate owned at the time.

But why had the estate later planted Cabernet and Merlot, blending them into their Sangiovese? The answer is acidity—the lively freshness that makes Sangiovese such a brilliant food wine, but that winemakers have spent generations trying to tame.

While many international varieties lean on structure or richness, Sangiovese is all about energy. Its naturally high acidity gives it both immediacy and tension, making it an ideal partner for food. This acidity cuts through richness, enhances flavors, and keeps the wine feeling alive on the palate. A well-made Sangiovese never tires or bores the drinker—it invites another sip.

Yet in recent years, many producers have tried to soften Sangiovese’s acidity by pushing ripeness further—harvesting later in search of a fuller, rounder, more “important” wine. The result? Wines that lose their edge.

When Sangiovese is picked too late, instead of a spectrum of nuanced red fruit notes, you get denser, darker fruit flavors like blackberry and cassis. At first, these darker flavors may seem more noble or serious, but in reality, they signal overripeness—a loss of nuance and vibrancy. And when these even slightly overripe grapes become wine, acidity is smothered by weightier fruit flavors, leaving wines that feel less precise and, crucially, less suited to the table.

Another common approach is to soften acidity with extended barrel aging. Over time, this does mellow tannins and make acidity feel less sharp—but at what cost? Even with meticulous cellar work, prolonged aging inevitably leads to oxidation, muting vibrancy and shifting the wine’s profile toward dried fruits.

Rather than compensating for acidity, I see it as Sangiovese’s greatest asset. Picked at the right moment—not too early, not too late—its wines can achieve a beguiling tension between freshness and multi-layered complexity.

The result? A wine that is savory rather than sweet, crisp rather than heavy, vibrant rather than languid—a wine that complements a meal rather than competing with it. This is the essence of true Sangiovese: a wine that remains alive in the glass, evolving, engaging, and always inviting another sip.

I invite you to experience what Sangiovese can be when left unburdened by excess. Try the Fanciulle Sangioveses and compare them side by side—notice the balance, the freshness, the way they shift and evolve in the glass.