Why it matters
The producer
Fattoria Montellori farms 55 hectares across three distinct parcels in Fucecchio, a town in the western part of Florence province. Alessandro Nieri, the fourth generation of the family to run the estate, has been both owner and winemaker since 1998. He grew up with two inheritances: the land his great-grandfather Giuseppe bought in 1895, and a cellar philosophy that treats vineyard work as the primary job, with winemaking following rather than leading.
The estate's range divides sharply by geography. The Sangiovese-led still reds come from lower-altitude parcels in Cerreto Guidi and the Fucecchio hills. The traditional-method sparkling wines come from a separate three-hectare parcel at 500 metres, grown on completely different soil and trained on a different trellis system. Those two parts of the portfolio rarely appear together on the same shelf, which can make Montellori harder to place than producers with a single-style focus.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Fucecchio sits between Florence and Pisa, west of the Chianti zone and outside its boundaries. The town and its surrounding hills belong to the broader Toscana IGT category for wines that fall outside the named Chianti subzones. Cerreto Guidi, the township where Montellori's two largest vineyard blocks sit, is close enough to the Montalbano hills and the Arno valley that the landscape is open and the altitude moderate. That position gives Sangiovese reliable warmth for ripeness without the high-elevation cool that defines Chianti Classico to the east.
The estate's Chianti, though, carries that appellation name: the label reads Chianti rather than Toscana IGT, placing those wines within the Chianti DOCG, the broad denomination covering much of central Tuscany outside the Classico zone. Moro, as a Sangiovese blend with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, falls under Toscana IGT, the appellation category created specifically to accommodate wines that add international varieties to native grapes.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
The half-Trentino pergola at Podere del Montalbano is worth pausing on. The Trentino pergola is a high-trained system that lifts the canopy away from the ground, increases airflow, and reduces fungal pressure. A half-Trentino variant keeps some of those benefits while giving the grower more control over yield and ripeness. At 500 metres, where the growing season is already extended and the risk of underripeness is real, the training choice affects how much leaf cover protects the grapes from cold nights and how evenly the fruit ripens.
In the cellar, Alessandro Nieri uses temperature-controlled fermentation tanks for primary fermentation and French-oak barriques for ageing the still reds. Temperature control during fermentation lets the winemaker manage extraction and preserve aromatic freshness; French oak barriques are used for ageing the still reds.
Wines to know
The range in view
Montellori's range runs across three categories: Chianti, blended reds under Toscana IGT, and traditional-method sparkling wines.
Chianti is the entry point for the still reds: Sangiovese from the limestone clay-loam blocks in Cerreto Guidi, medium-bodied, with the red fruit and firm acidity that Sangiovese gives on clay-rich soils. The 2018 Chianti showed dark cherry, dried herbs, and a lightly tannic finish in an independent tasting.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Pas Dosè. It is the clearest example of what Montellori does that is genuinely its own: a traditional-method sparkling wine grown at 500 metres in three hectares of mountain vineyard, on silica and limestone soils, with no dosage added after disgorgement. In the glass it is fully dry, with fine mousse, stone fruit, green apple, and a chalky, mineral finish driven by the altitude and the soil. No other part of the Montellori range comes from this parcel, and nothing about it resembles a Chianti or a Super Tuscan. It is where the geography of the estate is most legible.