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Fattoria dei Barbi
The everyday red from a Montalcino estate, first made in 1969 and still wearing its original label. Mostly Sangiovese, kept in steel with no oak, so the strawberry and cherry fruit stays bright. About £18.50 to £22.
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Fattoria dei Barbi describe red berries and wild strawberry over a light floral note, then a supple, fresh palate. Vivino drinkers rate the 2022 at 3.8 out of 5, the best-scoring year yet for this wine. Nobody mentions oak, because there is none.
Red berries and wild strawberry lead, exactly as Fattoria dei Barbi describe it on their own sheet. A light floral lift sits behind the fruit. Nothing is heavy or toasty here: the wine never goes near a barrel, so what you smell is the grape and the year.
Violet
Cherry
Plum
Raspberry
Red forest berries
Strawberry
TeaSupple and fresh rather than big. The tannin is soft and the acidity bright, which is what makes it work against tomato. Marl and clay at 400 metres keep the fruit red and tart rather than jammy. The crushed fruit is chilled to 16°C before fermenting, which fixes the colour, and the wine stays a lively ruby.
Clean and medium in length, closing on tart red fruit. Fattoria dei Barbi call it delightfully drinkable, and the short finish is part of that. It leaves the mouth fresh rather than coated.
Montalcino's everyday bottle, from an estate far better known for its Brunello. Vivino drinkers put the 2022 at 3.8 out of 5, the best-rated year for this wine, while older vintages sit near 3.5 across several thousand ratings. Drink it inside four years of the harvest.
Three shops list it: £18.55 and £21 for the 2023, and £21.88 for the 2022 at the Italian retailer vino.com. Under £20 buys a wine grown and bottled by a Brunello estate, which is where the interest sits at this price.
Scored on food, value, cellar life and three more. This scores high as an everyday wine and low as a cellar one, which is exactly what the estate built it to be.
Under £20 at most shops, easy to drink and happy with ordinary food. The estate says as much: a versatile wine, never excessive.
Soft, fruity and unoaked, with nothing austere about it. One of the easiest ways into Sangiovese for someone who has not drunk much Italian red.
Fresh acidity and soft tannin make this an easy table wine. It handles tomato, pork and mild heat, which is a wider range than most Tuscan reds at the price.
Between £18.55 and £21.88 for a wine grown and bottled by a Montalcino estate. You are paying for the fruit and the address, not for barrels or years of cellar time.
A plain Toscana IGT built for the weeknight table. Good wine, but not the bottle you open to mark something.
The estate gives it four to five years and no more. There is no oak and no long ageing behind it, so nothing improves by waiting.
Scoring is rule-based and deterministic. The model and weightings are documented in our Wine Fit Score methodology.
A compact view of what the Toscana denomination actually requires, and how this bottle sits inside it. Pulled from the official Italian disciplinare.
Two opposite years. 2022 was a drought, rescued by rain in late August and picked early, with a small crop. 2023 was wet instead: a rainy spring, mildew, roughly half the usual fruit, then hill winds that kept what was left clean into October.
A wet winter and spring brought hail and mildew to Montalcino in 2023, and some estates picked barely half their usual fruit. Winds on the higher slopes kept the healthy bunches clean, and picking ran from late September into mid October. The wines came out floral and crisp, with firm acidity.
2022 was a drought year in Montalcino. A dry winter ran into a hot summer, and yields fell. Rain at the end of August rescued it, and cooler nights through September kept the fruit fresh. Picking started a week to ten days earlier than usual.
A wet winter and spring brought hail and mildew to Montalcino in 2023, and some estates picked barely half their usual fruit. Winds on the higher slopes kept the healthy bunches clean, and picking ran from late September into mid October. The wines came out floral and crisp, with firm acidity.
Drink-now / hold guidance reflects general style cues for this wine, not a forecast for a specific bottle. Where vintage-level editorial notes exist, they appear above.
The estate sits at Podernovi, in the hills of Montalcino. In 1969 Giovanni Colombini went back to old Tuscan fermentation methods and came out with this wine: long macerations, refined even when young, but able to keep. His original label is still on the bottle.
Italian wine law sorts bottles into a pyramid. DOCG sits at the top: tightly drawn boundaries, prescribed grapes, mandatory ageing, government tasting before release. DOC is the same idea with looser thresholds. IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) is broader still, requiring only that 85% of the grapes come from the named territory.
Toscana is in the IGT tier. That is not a quality verdict, it is a description of how much freedom the producer has at vinification and ageing.
Toscana falls within Tuscany, covering Arezzo · Firenze · Grosseto · Livorno · Lucca · Massa Carrara · Pisa · Pistoia · Prato · Siena.
Winery
Montalcino
Wine area
Made at Fattoria dei Barbi, Montalcino. Directions
Fattoria dei Barbi farm at Podernovi in Montalcino, where vineyard land is priced by what Brunello fetches. Brusco carries a share of that cost even though it sells as a plain Toscana IGT.
The wine rests in stainless steel and is sold young. No barrel to buy, and no years of stock sitting in a cellar earning nothing. That is the main reason it costs a fraction of the estate's Brunello.
The label says Toscana IGT, which carries none of the premium Brunello di Montalcino commands. Same hill, same estate, same grape, and the price lands under £20.
Duty on a still red is £2.67 a bottle and VAT takes a fifth of the shelf price. On the £18.55 listing that is roughly £5.75 gone before the wine itself is paid for.
Montalcino lost a large part of the 2023 crop to a wet spring and mildew, and some estates picked about half their usual fruit. Less wine to sell holds the price up.
Three of the shops we track list it, from £18.55 to £21.88. Competing listings on one bottle stop any single shop from charging much more than the others.
Dishes that go with this wine
The estate's own list is white meats, cured pork, spicy sauces, fresh cheese and plain pizza. That is a wine for a Tuesday table. Soft tannin and fresh acidity are what make it work, not weight or power.
Tomato is sharp, and a soft low-acid red tastes flat and sweet next to it. This wine has acidity to spare, so the two meet as equals. That is why the estate names plain pizza on its own sheet before anything grander.
Try with: Pizza Margherita · Pizza Marinara · Ragu alla bolognese · More pairings →
Roast pork leaves fat coating the mouth. The acidity here cuts it and resets the palate, and the tannin is soft enough not to add its own drying edge on top. Fattoria dei Barbi list cured pork cuts as a match themselves.
Try with: Porchetta · Roast pork · Pork belly · More pairings →
Chilli makes tannin taste harsher, so a big oaked red turns bitter against heat. This wine has little tannin and no oak, so mild heat passes through it. The estate specifically names spicy sauces, which is unusual for a Tuscan red.
Try with: Pizza Diavola · Sfincione, Sicilian Pizza · Pizza Romana · More pairings →
White meat needs a red that will not bury it. This one is medium bodied and bright, so it sits alongside roast chicken rather than on top of it. A heavy oaked red would flatten the meat before the second mouthful.
Try with: Roast chicken · Cotoletta alla bolognese
Salt softens the feel of tannin and makes red fruit taste riper. On a wine this light that effect is welcome, and it turns a simple board into a proper match. Keep to fresh, mild cheeses, which is what the estate suggests.
Try with: Cheese board · Melton Mowbray Pork Pie · Porchetta
This is a light wine, and a long-braised stew or a fierce curry simply drowns it. Sugar is worse: a sweet pudding strips the fruit out and leaves the acidity sticking out on its own. Blue cheese overpowers it too.
Skip with: Lamb bhuna · Beef stew · Blue cheese · Cheesecake · Pairing guide →
Fattoria dei Barbi give it four to five years from the harvest, and they are right. There is no oak and no long ageing to unwind, so the reward is the fruit while it is still fresh. Keep bottles lying down at 12 to 14°C.
Peak around 2026. Best in the years above; holds without falling over either side.
A short splash decant softens the first-pour edge and opens the aromatics.
The estate gives it four to five years and no more. There is no oak and no long ageing behind it, so nothing improves by waiting.
£17.50 is the lowest tracked offer for the current vintage and we have no signal of further discounting.
Read directly from each retailer’s public product page once a day. Last refresh: 13 Sep 2026, 00:41 BST. We do not hold stock and we do not accept payment for placement.
Confidence · HighDrawn from what drinkers consistently report on Vivino and Wine-Searcher, summarised in our own words. A crowd read across many tasters, not a single critic.
Confidence · MediumFrom the official Italian disciplinare for this denomination, cross-checked against the Ministry of Agriculture register.
Confidence · HighOur reading of the price, drawn from the disciplinare, public UK duty rates, and typical landed-cost benchmarks. Not a quote from the producer or a retailer.
Confidence · MediumStyle guidance for this kind of wine at this price point. Treat it as advice, not a forecast for the bottle in your hand.
Confidence · MediumIt is the everyday red from Fattoria dei Barbi, an estate at Podernovi in the Montalcino hills. Giovanni Colombini created it in 1969 after studying old Tuscan ways of fermenting grapes. The label on the bottle is still the one he drew that year.
Bright and easy. Red berries and wild strawberry lead, with a light floral edge. It is supple rather than heavy, with soft tannin and fresh acidity, and it finishes clean. There is no oak flavour, because the wine never goes near a barrel.
Mostly Sangiovese, between 90 and 95%, with other red grapes making up the rest. The fruit comes from the estate's own vines at Montalcino, on marl and clay soil at 400 metres, facing south west.
No. It comes from the same estate and the same hill, but it is sold as Toscana IGT. Brunello di Montalcino must be pure Sangiovese and spend years in wood. Brusco is blended, unoaked and made to drink young, which is why it costs far less.
Fattoria dei Barbi point it at white meats, cured pork, spicy sauces, fresh cheeses and plain pizza. Tomato is the key. The wine's acidity meets tomato head on instead of turning sour against it.
Not long. The estate says four to five years from the vintage, and that is about right. This is built to drink young while the fruit is bright. Serve it at 18°C, or a little cooler in summer.
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