The expression of Sangiovese grown in Radda – Chianti Classico’s famous forested, high elevation zone – is simply one of my favorites.

With its pure-fruited character and capacity to age for a generation, the best bottles are arguably Tuscany’s most elegant wines. You see this clearly in Poggerino’s beautiful N'uovo bottling, a newer wine from one of the zone’s oldest organic growers. Inspired by a visit to Champagne's Larmandier-Bernier, fine-tuned by experimentation over three years of making unreleased wine, it draws out the unique fragrance and radiance of Radda.

I sat down last week with Poggerino's Piero Lanza, learning more about his estate and this very special wine that I’ve loved more with each release. – Chris

Piero Lanza lit up when I asked him about his 2010 trip to Larmandier-Bernier. The grower (whose first vintage was 1980), is obsessed with expressing Sangiovese via Radda's terroir. He’s planted over 20 different clones of the grape on his 12.5-hectare estate, which has been certified organic for over 50 years.

After decades of making only red wine, he wanted to try his hand at sparkling; so he went to the source, visiting Champagne to do research in 2010. It was here in the cellar of Larmandier-Bernier where he saw cement eggs being used to age the base wine – a vessel he'd never seen in his thirty years of winemaking. 

The eggs were just then becoming popular in French cellars, allowing winemakers to naturally add texture without the oxygen exchange or flavor of oak, instead via continuously flowing lees. But, they were nowhere to be found in Italy.

Excited and curious about how Sangiovese would behave in the vessel, Piero bought six eggs for his cellar – possibly the first in Tuscany, if not Italy.

Piero with one of his eggs; photo via @fattoriapoggerino

He would spend the next three years experimenting with different clones, élevage, and bottle aging. Though he produced wines from the eggs between 2010–2012, he never released them; deciding only in 2013 to add 'N'uovo' to the lineup. And, he openly admits, it wasn’t until 2016 that he fully understood which vines worked best and how long the finished wine should age.

Now on his fifth vintage of having the wine “locked in,” he believes N'uovo needs to come from his largest clusters – with their higher juice-to-skin ratio – to emphasize aromatics and fruit over tannin. Like all of his wines, N'uovo is spontaneously fermented in cement tanks with only gentle pumpovers. It ages quietly in 650L eggs before being bottled, and then aged for another two years.

The result is ethereal, smelling of Radda’s forest with cooling red fruit. Seamlessly textured and layered, shining a spotlight on the flavors of pure-fruited Sangiovese.

N'uovo has easily become one of my favorite bottles in the shop. It sits uniquely between Piero's Chianti Classico (which is as good as any village-level wine in the area) and his Riserva, which brings the most power (which is bottled from the smallest clusters on the estate, a counterpoint to N'uovo).

2023 Poggerino Chianti Classico DOCG Tuscany, Italy $30
One of our favorite values in Chianti. 100% Radda Sangiovese, destemmed, pressed and macerated in concrete tank for 35 days. Racked to Slavonian oak cask and French oak tonneau, aged for a year.

2021 Poggerino 'N'uovo' Chianti Classico DOCG, Italy, $50
100% Sangiovese destemmed, pressed and macerated in concrete tank for 35 days. Racked to 6.5hl cement egg and aged for one year, bottled and aged for an additional 8 months.

2021 Poggerino 'Bugialla' Chianti Classico Riserva DOCG, Italy, $50
100% Sangiovese destemmed, pressed and macerated in concrete tank for 55 days. Racked to Slavonian oak barrels and aged for 18 months, bottled and aged for an additional year.

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