Celestino Pecci

Sangiovese kept close to its line

The cellar work turns on Sangiovese and large botti; Tiziana Pecci, winemaker at Celestino Pecci in Montalcino, keeps that frame steady. Her station is the family estate founded in 1968 by Celestino Pecci, in the countryside near Sant'Antimo Abbey and about 5 km from Montalcino. The house belongs to the Brunello discipline, where season, picking decision, fermentation, and élevage have to protect what the grape has already given rather than dress it in cellar work.

Pecci runs the estate and the farmhouse with that continuity in view. The published lineage here is familial rather than academic: Celestino Pecci began the estate after choosing the land over the office career his parents, Guido and Maddalena, had imagined for him, and his daughter now carries the work forward. The method is not presented as nostalgia. It is a practical cellar language, built around Sangiovese, traditional aging vessels, and a sustainable way of farming that treats the vineyard as the first instrument of the wine.

Large botti, clear structure

The Brunello at Celestino Pecci is produced and aged in 10- and 35-hectoliter botti. That choice matters because it keeps oak in proportion; the vessel gives time and slow exchange without pushing the wine away from grape character. In a place where Brunello di Montalcino DOCG is tied to Sangiovese, this is not a small preference. It is the house grammar.

The estate works with Sangiovese for Brunello di Montalcino DOCG and Rosso di Montalcino, with bottlings that include Rosso di Montalcino, Brunello, Brunello Poggio al Carro, and Brunello Maddalena. The vineyards sit on clay loam and limestone rock soils, with elevations between 250 and 330 meters, and the training system named for the estate is Guyot. The landholding is described at approximately 40 hectares. Organic farming practices are part of the work, though the estate does not present itself through formal certification. Pecci's emphasis is ecological responsibility, resource use, and biodiversity, which keeps the sustainability language close to the rows rather than the label copy.

The cellar beside the countryside

The room is quiet in the way working wineries often are: less staged than inhabited, with the tasting tied to the cellar and the vineyard rather than separated from them. The setting carries the older Tuscan register, farm buildings, vines, and the pull of the abbey nearby. Visitors encounter a family estate before they encounter a polished tasting room, and that order suits the wines.

In the cellar, the scale remains medium, with enough range to show distinctions across the portfolio and enough family presence to keep the hand visible. Brunello asks for patience by law and by habit; here, patience has a material form in large wood, Sangiovese skins, and the measured interval between harvest and release. The final impression belongs less to spectacle than to duration. It rests in Brunello Maddalena.