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One of Italy's cult reds: Montepulciano from vines packed up to 50,000 per hectare on the south Marche coast, air-dried and aged two years in new French oak. Dense, sweet-centred, chocolatey. UK list prices £120 to £225, when you can find it.
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Kurni's Vivino taste profile is built from 1,107 reviews, and oak leads it: vanilla, chocolate and tobacco, over blackberry jam and prune. The famous banana whiff opens Vivino's own list of its primary aromas.
Vanilla, dark chocolate and tobacco come first, then blackberry jam and prune. Many drinkers pick up a banana note, odd as that sounds: Vivino's own description lists it first among the primary aromas. In its summary of 1,107 reviews, oaky notes lead with 318 mentions.
Blackberry
Cherry
Plum
Prune
Tobacco
Leather
Liquorice
Vanilla
ChocolateThick, sweet-centred and velvety, with dense but ripe tannin. The grapes are air-dried and the wine passes through new French oak twice, which is where the chocolate depth comes from. Vinous's Eric Guido puts it just short of Amarone levels of concentration.
Very long and warm at 14.5%, with liquorice and the coffee-roast edge an Italian merchant singles out. The sweetness carries right through to the end.
A cult red that splits opinion by design, yet Vivino drinkers rate every recent vintage 4.6 out of 5 across more than 3,000 ratings. First made in 1997, it turned the Marche's workhorse grape into a collector's wine to cellar for years.
8wines and vino.com carry the 2023 at list prices of £120.18 and £176.67, both discounted as we write; Hedonism in Mayfair holds the mature 2015 at £225. The 2022 shows out of stock at £146.
The scores below say what the price already hints: superb for cellaring and occasions, poor for everyday drinking, and divisive enough that Vinous leaves the style verdict to the taster.
A trophy Italian red with Tre Bicchieri in its award list: made for milestone dinners and serious gifts.
Air-dried fruit, dense tannin and two years of new oak: the importer says decades, and the 2015 on sale proves the arc.
Dense enough to overwhelm light plates; save it for steak, braises and aged cheese.
£120.18 is real money for an IGT, but the price reflects tiny yields and a double bill of new oak, not marketing.
An extreme, divisive style: Vinous itself says enjoying it depends on the taster. Not a first Italian red.
A £120 bottle at 14.5% is nobody's Tuesday wine.
Scoring is rule-based and deterministic. The model and weightings are documented in our Wine Fit Score methodology.
A compact view of what the Marche denomination actually requires, and how this bottle sits inside it. Pulled from the official Italian disciplinare.
All three sit at 14.5%. The 2015 comes from a growing season Hedonism calls exceptional; the 2022 leans on a plot of hundred-year-old vines.
Mostly from a plot of hundred-year-old Montepulciano vines above the sea, wild-fermented and given two years in new oak barrels. Built to rest in the cellar for decades.
A warm year that Hedonism calls an exceptional growing season, ripe but balanced. Mature now, and the most mature of the three vintages listed here, at £225.
A warm year that Hedonism calls an exceptional growing season, ripe but balanced. Mature now, and the most mature of the three vintages listed here, at £225.
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.
Casolanetti is the fifth generation on 17 hectares near the southern Marche coast, and the first to bet the estate on its old Montepulciano. Kurni arrived in 1997; Vinous credits him with testing the boundaries of what is possible with the grape.
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.
Marche 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.
Marche falls within Marche.
Winery
Cupra Marittima
Wine area
Made at Azienda Agricola Oasi degli Angeli, Cupra Marittima. Directions
Each vine carries a tiny crop, so one bottle of Kurni swallows the fruit of far more vines than a normal Marche red.
D'Agata calls it 200% new oak: after a year in new barrels the wine moves into more new barrels, each bought for a single use.
Drying concentrates the juice and cuts yields again, and the wild ferment can run into the summer after harvest, tying up the cellar.
£3.33 of the price is excise duty at 2026 rates. On a £120.18 bottle the tax is a rounding error: the wine itself is the cost.
Kurni answers to no DOC ageing mandate or tasting commission; nothing in its price comes from denomination rules.
Dishes that go with this wine
At 14.5%, dense and sweet-centred, Kurni flattens delicate plates. Vivino lists beef and veal among its matches, and the pairings below stay in that weight class.
Kurni's density needs food with the same shoulders. Charred, rare beef meets the sweet-centred fruit head on, and the ripe tannin reads silky against the meat. Beef is the first match on Vivino's list.
Try with: Fiorentina steak · Ribeye steak · Sirloin steak · More pairings →
Hours of braising melt meat into softness, and Kurni's dense tannin dissolves into it. The chocolate and prune notes echo the dark, sticky pan juices.
Try with: Brasato al Barolo · Agnello Ragu Lucano · Venison Stew · More pairings →
Salty aged cheese wants sweetness and weight opposite it. Kurni brings both, the way port does for stilton, but dry. A small pour goes a long way here.
Try with: Cheese board · Blue cheese · Strong cheddar cheese · More pairings →
Venison or wellington with a plum or cherry reduction mirrors the wine's own jammy core. The match works on sweetness meeting sweetness, with the meat keeping it savoury.
Try with: Venison Stew · Beef wellington · Lamb shank · More pairings →
At 14.5% with heavy new oak, Kurni swamps shellfish and light seafood, and chilli heat turns its warmth harsh. With mussels or spice, pour a crisp Marche white like Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi instead.
Skip with: Cozze arraganate · Crispy chilli beef · Szechuan beef · Pairing guide →
The importer's advice is blunt: a wine to last in the cellar for decades. New-oak structure and air-dried fruit slow its clock, and the 2015 on sale now shows where it goes.
A short splash decant softens the first-pour edge and opens the aromatics.
Air-dried fruit, dense tannin and two years of new oak: the importer says decades, and the 2015 on sale proves the arc.
£113.08 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, 01:22 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 · MediumKurni is a 100% Montepulciano red from Oasi degli Angeli, the 17-hectare estate of Marco Casolanetti and Eleonora Rossi near the southern Marche coast. First made in 1997, it is sold as Marche IGT and made in tiny quantities from densely planted old vines.
Scarcity and method. Vines are planted at up to 50,000 per hectare and cropped to a trickle. The grapes are air-dried, and the wine spends around two years in French barrels bought new twice over. The £120 to £225 UK price reflects all of that.
Dense and velvety: vanilla, dark chocolate and tobacco over blackberry jam, prune and a famous banana note. It is dry, but the ripeness reads sweet. Drinkers rate it 4.6 out of 5 on Vivino across recent vintages.
Close in weight, different in origin. Vinous's Eric Guido puts Kurni just short of Amarone levels of concentration and praises its balance. Like Amarone it uses dried grapes, but it is pure Montepulciano from the Marche, not a Veneto blend.
Its importer calls it a wine to last decades in the cellar. The mature 2015 selling in London today shows the arc. There is no rush on the 2022 or 2023.
Big food: Fiorentina steak, braised beef, venison and aged cheeses. Vivino lists beef and veal among its matches. Keep it away from delicate seafood and hot spice.
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