Casa Raia’s Brunello is made from their oldest 1.1ha of vines around their home, original planted by and purchased from the famed Biondi-Santi. With holistic farming, Pierre-Jean has nurtured these vines to bring forth absolutely bewitching fruit — heart & soul Sangiovese of profound texture. Pierre-Jean brings his Brunello to the bottle using the pre-war methods and old-school stylings, eschewing 228L barriques for the classical 3000L botte, and ageing the wine therein for four years as opposed to two. (He nevertheless uses the very best French oak, as opposed to Hungarian or Slovenian oak—he’s a proud Frenchman after all!) With a natural indigenous yeast fermentation, minimal sulphites, long ageing, and hands off winemaking in minuscule quantities (only 1500 bottles per year), this outstanding Brunello arrives as if from a time machine. The wine shows typicity and terroir expertly with a complex melange of herbal and tobacco and tomato-like notes over full-bodied and tensile red fruit. Rich, taut acidity, and huge but beautifully ripened tannins coat your entire palate. It’s powerful, structured, and built to last. And the wine just goes and goes, blossoming in the glass, bringing forward different aromas like characters on a stage. Every breath of air brings this wine to life in a new way. Find notes of eucalyptus, plum, dried cherry, vanilla, clove, old balsamic, leather, cigar... The list goes on. It’s truly a living wine OG natural wine-lovers always celebrate and espouse, but the wine’s profile is anything but off-beat. It is classical and harmonious, grounded on the same traditions that made Brunello one of the two first DOCG’s. Regal and rare, drinking now but happy to lay down for a 10-20 years.