2008 Lisini Ugolaia pre-shipment offer

For the story of Brunello di Montalcino there's no better place to start than Lisini, home to the Clementi-Lisini family since the 1500s. On my recent visit, Carlo Lisini explained that, prior to World War Two, the now famous wine didn't exist as a commercial proposition, but was primarily for domestic consumption. Montalcino was best known for tobacco, grown to produce a very strong cigar called La Toscana. Growing up in the 1960s, Carlo remembers the area being extremely poor.

But it was in the 60s that things began to change. Carlo's aunt, Elina Lisini, who'd inherited the estate from her father, saw the site's huge potential. Superbly situated on the southern side of the Montalcino zone, around 350m above sea level, and benefitting from the effect of the sea only 20 miles away, it's a site that encompasses the full complexity of the area's geology: sandy clay and silt soils originating in the Eocene epoch, with a significant component of iron oxide from historic eruptions of the nearby Monte Amiata (the horizon in our picture). Elina set to work with zeal and tenacity. The first estate bottling took place in 1967, coinciding with that of the original twelve producers of the Brunello di Montalcino Consorzio.

There are just 500 cases of the flagship wine, Ugolaia, from a single, 1.3ha plot (centre of our picture) of 30 year old vines with a perfect combination of soil, microclimate and aspect. The 2008 is a beauty: dark fruits, great purity, precision and balance. It is the ultimate expression of this, one of the very finest and most traditional of all Brunello producers. /AR

Offered subject to remaining unsold for shipment spring 2015