July 2026
The Month of
Family Lines
Wine is one of the few trades where the people who plant a vine rarely live to drink from its best years, which makes the handoff the real story. This month we follow lineage through a single grape: three Sangioveses from three Tuscan houses still in family hands, each shaped by who passed the land down and who farms it now. From Montepulciano to Chianti Classico to Montalcino, the same variety speaks in three family dialects. And in the Spotlight, Foradori of Trentino, where the succession is not a memory but a thing happening at the winery right now, a fourth generation already at the tanks.
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01
WEEKDAY · UNDER $20
POLIZIANO ROSSO DI MONTEPULCIANO
2024 · Montepulciano DOC, Tuscany
Ripe red fruit comes first, then a twist of blood orange and a thread of red licorice, with a faint mineral note like wet stone underneath. The palate is medium-bodied and crunchy, with the kind of tension that keeps a casual red honest. This is the farm team to Poliziano’s flagship Vino Nobile, the same Prugnolo Gentile clone off the same hills, picked from younger vines and given a lighter hand in the cellar so it drinks well within a year of release. Federico Carletti took over from his father Dino in 1980, came back from northern Italy with an agriculture degree, and rebuilt the estate into a Vino Nobile reference. The Rosso is where that family standard meets a Tuesday table.
TASTING NOTES
Ripe red fruit, blood orange, red licorice, wet stone
PAIRS WITH
Spaghetti al pomodoro with torn basil, grilled lamb skewers
GRAPE
Sangiovese (Prugnolo Gentile)
DRINK WINDOW
2025–2028
Vintage Context
Poliziano draws the Rosso from younger plantings across its Montepulciano holdings, picking earlier and extracting gently to keep the fruit bright and the structure approachable. The result is built for the near term rather than the cellar, a wine meant to be opened while it still tastes like the year it was born.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A weeknight board for an easy Tuscan red
Pecorino Toscano · Finocchiona salami · Fig jam · Castelvetrano olives · Rosemary focaccia
02
SATURDAY POUR · UNDER $35
MAZZEI SER LAPO CHIANTI CLASSICO RISERVA
2020 · Chianti Classico DOCG, Tuscany
Violets open over ripe red berry and raspberry, with a lift of citrus zest and a low note of chocolate behind it. The structure is the point here: fine-grained tannins, real length, everything in balance rather than competing. The wine is named for Ser Lapo Mazzei, the Florentine notary whose 1398 letter to the merchant Francesco Datini is the first known document to use the word Chianti for a wine. His family has made wine at Fonterutoli since the estate came to them by marriage in 1435, an unbroken line of nearly six centuries. A measure of Merlot rounds the Sangiovese, but the wine still reads as Chianti Classico to its core.
TASTING NOTES
Violets, raspberry, citrus zest, chocolate
PAIRS WITH
Bistecca alla Fiorentina, pappardelle with wild boar ragù
GRAPE
Sangiovese with a measure of Merlot
DRINK WINDOW
2024–2030
Vintage Context
The fruit comes off vines roughly fifteen to thirty years old, mature enough to carry the Riserva’s structure without losing perfume. Mazzei builds the wine for the medium haul, firm on release and rewarding a few years of patience before it loosens into its violet-and-berry register.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A Saturday board for a wine six centuries in the making
Pecorino Toscano stagionato · Prosciutto di Parma · Sour cherry preserves · Marinated artichoke hearts · Schiacciata crackers
03
SPLURGE · THE CELLAR PICK
CONTI COSTANTI BRUNELLO DI MONTALCINO
2020 · Brunello di Montalcino DOCG, Tuscany
Violets and rose meet cherry and pomegranate on the nose, with graphite and wet earth giving the whole thing gravity. The palate is powerful, the tannins velvety before they firm up and grip, and the length tells you this is a wine built for the long view. Costanti is one of the founding names of modern Brunello: the family has been documented in Montalcino since 1555, and Tito Costanti was among the very first to put the name Brunello on a bottle, showing the 1865 vintage at an exhibition. When Emilio Costanti died without an heir in 1983, the estate passed to his nephew Andrea, a fresh University of Siena geology graduate with no wine background, whose reading of the galestro under his feet turned out to suit the site better than any apprenticeship could have.
TASTING NOTES
Violets, cherry, pomegranate, graphite
PAIRS WITH
Wild mushroom risotto with aged Parmigiano, slow-roasted leg of lamb
GRAPE
Sangiovese (Brunello)
DRINK WINDOW
2027–2045
Vintage Context
The fruit grows on twelve hectares along the Colle al Matrichese ridge, 310 to 400 metres up, rooted in galestro, the friable Cretaceous limestone-clay schist that gives Montalcino its spine. Costanti makes this for the cellar, not the table this year. The tannins need time to settle, and the structure rewards it; this is a wine to lay down and meet again closer to 2030.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A splurge-worthy board for a Brunello built to age
Parmigiano Reggiano 24-month · Soppressata Toscana · Quince paste · Toasted Marcona almonds · Pane Toscano crostini
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Producer Spotlight
Foradori
Trentino — a fourth generation, already at the tanks
In Trentino, the Foradori name has spent four generations bound to a single nearly-lost grape, Teroldego, and the work of saving it. Meet the family rescuing an indigenous variety one mass-selection at a time, and the bottle that introduces you to all of them at once.
The TERROIR Letter
The Cellar, Delivered
Monthly selections and a weekly Subscriber’s Pick — curated bottles that never appear on the site.
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