Le Chiuse

Fruit moves by gravity before the barrel

Grapes move by gravity at Le Chiuse in Montalcino before Lorenzo Magnelli, winemaker and manager, commits them to Sangiovese’s longer clock. He is Florence-born, but his route to the cellar was not a detached professional path; he was brought into the family business early, and he now works as owner and winemaker at the estate. That gives the bench-side decisions here a family pressure as much as a technical one. Le Chiuse is tied to the Biondi-Santi line through its vineyards and through the BBS11 Sangiovese clone, with budwood selected from 60-70-year-old vines. The estate began bottling under its own name in the early 1990s, though accounts differ between 1992 and 1993 for the start of production under the Le Chiuse label. What matters in the glass is less the date than the discipline it set in motion: Brunello di Montalcino, Brunello di Montalcino Riserva, and Rosso di Montalcino made inside a traditional frame, with Magnelli’s sense of vintage measured by longevity rather than release speed.

Sangiovese held to its own pace

The vineyards sit at roughly 300-330 meters above sea level, on calcareous clay soils with northern exposure. Le Chiuse works with organic certification since 2005, manual grape selection, thermo-controlled vinification, indigenous yeasts, gravity-based processing and bottling, and aging in large Slavonian oak barrels. The estate states low yields of 4-5 metric tons per hectare, a number that tells more about the method than a paragraph of praise would. This is not a cellar chasing the polish of small oak. The house rejects barrique in favor of larger-format aging, letting Sangiovese keep its line, tannin and acidity through time. Its Brunello comes from the smallest grape bunches from the oldest vineyard, while Rosso di Montalcino draws the varietal character into a fresher register. Magnelli’s own language returns to patience. Speaking of 2010, he called it one of the best vintages of the last 10 years and said its strongest characteristic was longevity, with life measured against the last 10 or 20 years. The Riserva from that vintage was held for release in 2020 because he considered it too young the year before.

Woods, olive groves and a working cellar

The place reads as an agricultural estate before it reads as a tasting address. Adjacent woods and olive groves frame the vineyards, part of the biodiversity the estate names as central to its way of farming. Inside that landscape, the cellar’s gravity-based handling suggests a practical architecture, built to move fruit and wine with less mechanical force rather than to announce itself. The work stays close to Sangiovese: grape selection, fermentation, large oak, waiting. There is also a classic method sparkling wine from pure Sangiovese, a less common gesture in Montalcino and a useful clue to the house’s range. Here, the Brunello di Montalcino Riserva stands out, especially when Magnelli lets a vintage such as 2010 sit until 2020.