Paolo e Lorenzo Marchionni 'l'Erta Poggio della Bruna' 2009

Like its younger brother Rossovigliano, l'Erta Poggo della Bruna is 100% Sangiovese. Fermented in concrete tank, it spends 17 months aging in wood of various sizes, mostly neutral. 

This is a dark smoky pulp-comic of a wine. Charismatic, deep and edgy. It has the chiaroscuro bite of a Dylan Dog Corrado Roi drawing. That's my favorite Italian pen-and-ink serial. What's important about this wine isn't the fruit, although crisp cranberries and dried cherries come swinging at you from its shadows. It's the sense of transport. It's walking up a lonely Tuscan hillside, your hand at your side softly raking through the wheat and wild fennel grown tall in the sun. It's dusk, and you can hear the cooing of doves and the squeals of wild boars in the nearby woods. A bit of red sandstone dust kicks up where you walk, and the scent of roasted garlic and olive oil cooking wafts to you on the breeze from a nearby villa. While this wine is firm and lush, it's still unmistakably rustic and Italian.