Brunello di Montalcino Wine Tour

Brunello di Montalcino Wine Tour from Florence or Siena, small group

There are wines you drink and wines that change how you think about wine. Brunello di Montalcino is the second kind. One of the most celebrated and age worthy reds in the world, made from 100% Sangiovese, aged for years before release, produced in one of the smallest and most beautiful wine zones in Italy. This tour takes you there.

A full day from Florence to the hills above the Val d’Orcia. Two carefully selected producers. A Tuscan lunch included. Maximum eight people.

Why Brunello

Brunello di Montalcino is not an easy wine to understand on paper. It needs to be tasted at the source, explained by the person who made it, with the vineyard visible through the window and the Val d’Orcia stretching out below. That context changes everything. A wine that might seem austere in a restaurant becomes something else entirely when you taste it in the cellar where it was aged, from a producer who can tell you exactly which slope the grapes came from and why the 2016 vintage is different from the 2015.

This is a tour for people who want to understand wine, not just drink it. And for people who want to understand one of the most beautiful landscapes in Italy, which happens to also produce one of its greatest wines.

The Story Behind Our First Stop

I first visited this winery in 2004, early in my guiding days. A close friend and I were driving the back roads around Montalcino looking for a producer to add to my tours, somewhere with beautiful surroundings and wine worth the detour. We took a wrong turn, then another, and then we spotted a long driveway lined with extraordinary iron sculptures made by a well-known local artist, a friend of the family. We turned in.

Giacomo was 23 years old. He had never done a tasting for visitors in his life. But he welcomed us with a smile that filled the room, took us through his entire cellar, a building dating to the 1200s, and opened everything: his Brunello, his grappa, his Vinsanto. All of it, without hesitation, without asking for anything in return.

He told us he had inherited the vineyards and the cellar from his grandfather. His father was an oncologist at the hospital in Siena, and it was his father who had instilled in him a deep commitment to biodynamic farming, not as a trend or a marketing choice, but as a medical conviction: pesticides and chemicals cause harm. An oncologist who farms without poison. It makes complete sense when you hear it said that way.

Giacomo was the only one of four siblings who felt the pull of the land. He had studied oenology, come back, and started making wine alone, with very little money, biodynamic from day one.

Before we left I told him I was a tour operator looking for Brunello producers to work with. Twenty years later, every time I put together a Brunello itinerary, he is the first stop I book.

What to Expect

The tour departs at 8:30am from Piazza Poggi in Florence. Montalcino is a two-hour drive south, through the Chianti hills and into the landscape of the Val d’Orcia. The drive is part of the experience.

The first visit is usually the longer one: a cellar tour followed by a seated tasting of four to four wines, with the producer present and available for questions. Brunello, Rosso di Montalcino (the younger, more approachable wine made from the same grapes), sometimes older vintages if the relationship and the occasion call for it.

Lunch is at one of the estates: a traditional Tuscan meal with Brunello wine, in a setting that makes it easy to understand why people who come to this part of Italy tend to come back.

The return is quieter than the departure, as it always is after a day like this.

You will return to Florence by approximately 5:30pm, with a different understanding of what Sangiovese can be when it is given the time and the land it deserves.

Meeting Point & more info:

When: Every Thursday at 8:30am

Where does the tour start? Piazza Giuseppe Poggi, Florence (see the map)

How long is the wine tour? 8 hours

How far? It’s a 2 hours drive from Florence to the first stop.

Min. 4 people

Price: 250€ per person (tip not included)

Dietary restrictions? Please let us know at least 24 hours in advance.

In case we don’t reach the minimum amount of people, you will automatically be moved to the Tuscan Wine Tour or 2 Wineries Chianti tour, depending on availability, and the difference in price will be removed from the balance.