Rare Riserva Brunello Royalty
Three Times WS Top 100

Dear Artisans,

Some wines are made every year. This one is not. Brunello di Montalcino Riserva “Vigna Paganelli” is bottled only when Il Poggione decides the vintage deserves it — and the last time they decided that was 2016. Monica Larner opened her Wine Advocate review by saying exactly that.

2019 deserved it. Seven critics have now weighed in and not one of them is below ninety-four. — Vinous went ninety-eight and called it drop-dead gorgeous. Decanter and The Wine Independent both went ninety-seven. Wine Spectator gave it ninety-six and a place at number fifty-two on the Top 100 Wines of 2025.

We have eighteen bottles, in three original wooden cases.

The fruit comes from one block. I Paganelli was planted in 1964, it is the oldest vineyard on the estate, and its vines are the reference clone for everything Il Poggione has planted since — the best and ripest bunches are picked one at a time by hand.

Then comes the part I find remarkable. The fruit goes through three successive selections, and whatever is rejected is thrown out rather than quietly blended into a cheaper bottle — Michaela Morris confirmed that with Fabrizio Bindocci for her Decanter review. Most estates would never absorb that loss.

What survives spends forty-eight months in large oak casks and another twelve in bottle. Five years before it reaches you.

This is the third time Wine Spectator has put an Il Poggione wine on its Top 100, and the three placements tell you more together than any one of them does alone. They span the whole range, from the twenty-seven dollar Rosso to the Riserva.

In 2015 the estate’s Brunello di Montalcino 2010 came in at number four in the world, which put it inside that year’s Top Ten. In 2017 the Rosso di Montalcino, the entry-level bottle, landed at forty-six. And now the Riserva at fifty-two — very few estates place a twenty-seven dollar wine and a hundred and thirty dollar wine on the same list within a decade.

Look at the table below. Soldera, Biondi-Santi and Poggio di Sotto are the names people reach for when they talk about the summit of Montalcino, and they sit between five hundred and eight hundred dollars a bottle. This wine scores with them — it costs a hundred and twenty-nine ninety-nine.

That is not a discount, it is a gap in how the market prices reputation. Antonio Galloni put it more bluntly than I would dare: “For the money, there is not a single better wine being made in Montalcino than Il Poggione’s Brunello.”

Il Poggione was founded at Sant’Angelo in Colle by Lavinio Franceschi in the late 1800s and is run today by the fifth generation, Leopoldo and Livia Franceschi. It was one of the founding members of the Brunello di Montalcino consortium when it formed in 1967.

Fabrizio Bindocci arrived as winemaker in 1976 and has never left — his son Alessandro took over the day-to-day winemaking in 2005 and the two of them farm roughly three hundred and fifty acres between five hundred and fifteen hundred feet. Long maceration, large Slavonian casks, nothing hurried.

Three placements,
across three tiers of the range.

Each placement is a different wine from the same estate. The 2019 Riserva is the one on this page.

The same points.
A fifth of the money.

Comparison prices are averages of current US retail listings checked in August 2026. Score ranges cover recent vintages across major critics, not a single wine.

Everything worth knowing,
in six boxes.

Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino
Riserva "Vigna Paganelli" 2019

Seven publications reviewed this wine and the spread is remarkably tight: 98, 97, 97, 96, 95, 94, 94. What is striking is how differently they each describe it and how completely they agree on the verdict.

Eric Guido at Vinous went furthest, calling it “a dark stallion of a wine with a bouquet to meditate to” and closing on “drop-dead gorgeous.” Michaela Morris at Decanter took the opposite tack and praised its restraint. Both are describing the same balance.

18 Bottles · Three 6-Pack OWCs

Sixty years of vine age.
Two more decades ahead.

Open one in 2028. Keep the rest and find out what it becomes by 2040.

Il Poggione Riserva "Vigna Paganelli" 2007
Double Magnum, 3 Litres

The same block, the same Riserva, from a vintage nineteen years back, and already there. The 2007 was a warm, generous Montalcino vintage and this bottle has spent long enough in glass to have moved past fruit into tobacco, leather, dried cherry and tar. Wine Spectator’s window on it runs to 2032, so we are sitting in the middle of it.

Three critics at ninety-five apiece. And the format matters: a three-litre double magnum ages more slowly than a bottle, because there is far more wine relative to the oxygen in the neck — this is the shape collectors buy when they intend to wait, or to open something at a table of twelve. There are two, both still in their wooden case.

Only 2 Double Magnums Left

One vineyard, planted in 1964,
bottled only when it deserves it.

Eighteen bottles in three original wooden cases, and there is no reorder. The next Vigna Paganelli Riserva will come when Il Poggione decides a vintage has earned it, which on recent form means somewhere around 2027.

Buy one and open it in 2028. Buy six and watch it move for twenty years. If you want to drink Brunello Riserva tonight rather than in 2028, the 2007 double magnum below is already there.

Seven critics, none below ninety-four, at a hundred and twenty-nine ninety-nine. I do not expect these to sit here long.

Cheers,

— James Tran

18 Bottles · Three 6-Pack OWCs · $129.99

Call 650-917-8080, text 650-880-3553, email sales@artisan.wine, or chat with us