Wine route
Strada del Sagrantino
2 days · 6 stops
Open the driveUmbria · DOCG
Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG Umbria's Inky, Age-Worthy 100% Sagrantino, Explained
Montefalco Sagrantino is Umbria's biggest red: 100% Sagrantino from five hill towns around Montefalco, aged more than three years before sale, with more tannin than almost any wine in Italy. A DOCG since 1992, it comes dry, and as a sweet Passito from dried grapes, the way the monks first made it.
27
Wines live now
£20-£300
Price range today
9
UK retailers
Decode the label
What the label tells you
One word on the front changes the ageing, the strength and the price.
On the label
Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG
the dry wine, three years in the making
100% Sagrantino
33 months 12 in oak, then 4 in bottle
13% minimum alcohol
Inky, tannic and built to keep: decant it young, or wait ten years and skip the jug.
In stock from £17 See the 23 bottles ↓On the label
Passito
the sweet original
2 months on the drying racks
18% with 80 to 180 g/l of sugar
Raisin and fig with firm tannin: blue cheese, dark chocolate, or nothing at all.
In stock from £19.50 See the 3 bottles ↓The boundary
Where it is
Everything on this page, the estates, the bottles, the sub-zones, sits inside this line.
Estate 1
Arnaldo Caprai
Visit →Montefalco
Tastings available
Denomination
Grapes Used
Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG zone
Estates you can visit Wine route in the zoneOutside the zone
The zone is a patch of hill country in the middle of Umbria, south of Assisi and east of the Tiber. Montefalco's walled town sits at its centre on a ridge. The vineyards run down its slopes and across into parts of Bevagna, Giano dell'Umbria, Gualdo Cattaneo and Castel Ritaldi, between 220 and 472 metres. There are no sub-zones. The consortium maps four soil types instead: yellow sand around the town, clay and lake sand under Bevagna, river gravel on the valley floors, and marl on the higher ground.
Inside the zone
5
Communes
1,000 ha
Under vine
220-472 m
Vineyard band
1992
DOCG
Click or tap a pin for its estate. The numbered pins match the estate cards below.
Towns worth knowing
Montefalco
Bevagna
Gualdo Cattaneo
Giano dell'Umbria
Castel Ritaldi
Only Montefalco is inside the zone in full; the other four towns contribute the slopes that face it.
In the glass
What it tastes like, by style
One profile at a time, never blended into a single set of bars.
Blackberry
Plum
Liquorice
Black pepper
Raisin
Fig
Blueberry
Cinnamon
The disciplinare
The rules that define it
The same table on every denomination page, straight from the production rules.
Grape & its role
Share of the blend
050100%
Montefalco Sagrantino and Passito
SagrantinoAlone, dry or dried100%Solid means the rules demand it. Striped means optional, up to that amount. The words on the right say the same rule.
33 months' ageing before sale, 12 in oak then four months in bottle: no shortcuts to the shelf.
Yields are capped at 8 tonnes per hectare for a grape that gives small, thick-skinned bunches anyway.
Every lot passes a tasting panel before it may carry the DOCG.
Ageing and alcohol minimums per tier are in the label guide above.
Editor's cellar
Bottles to try, and what Montefalco Sagrantino costs in the UK
Every live Montefalco Sagrantino listing, cheapest to dearest
26 wines · 9 retailers
Live prices, compared across 9 UK retailers.
Cellar doors · inside the zone
Estates you can visit
One estate inside the zone opens its doors today. A small list, honestly kept: only working cellars with confirmed visits appear here.
No estates match these filters. Clear a filter to see more.
The years
Montefalco Sagrantino vintages, 2008-2022
Chart ratings come from the Consorzio Tutela Vini Montefalco's vintage evaluation for Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG (stars out of five, with a score out of 100 from 2017).
2008
Consorzio Montefalco 5/5
2009
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5
2010
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5
2011
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5
2012
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5
2013
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5
2014
Consorzio Montefalco 3/5
2015
Consorzio Montefalco 5/5
2016
Consorzio Montefalco 5/5
2017
Consorzio Montefalco 3/5, 88/100
2018
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5, 92/100
2019
Consorzio Montefalco 5/5, 95/100
2020
Consorzio Montefalco 5/5, 96/100
2021
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5, 94/100
2022
Consorzio Montefalco 4/5, 92/100
Reading the years
2008
Exceptional · 5/5
Consorzio Montefalco 5/5
The short version: 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2020 are the outstanding years; give any of them a decade.
Tap a year for its note.
How Montefalco Sagrantino is made
The grape is the whole rule: 100% Sagrantino, from vineyards in Montefalco and parts of Bevagna, Giano dell'Umbria, Gualdo Cattaneo and Castel Ritaldi, between 220 and 472 metres. Yields are capped at 8 tonnes a hectare. Both versions must age at least 33 months from the 1st of December after the harvest. The dry wine spends at least 12 of them in oak barrels of any size. After that comes four months in bottle, so no Montefalco Sagrantino reaches a shop less than three years after it was picked. The dry wine must reach 13% (13.5% when a single vineyard is named). For the Passito the bunches dry on racks for at least two months, then ferment on their skins to 18% with 80 to 180 grams of sugar a litre. Everything, drying included, happens inside the zone, and each lot passes a tasting panel before it may use the name.
In depth
Written records of Sagrantino around Montefalco go back to the 1500s, when it was a sweet wine for church feasts. The name probably comes from sacro or sagrestia. For most of its history the wine was Passito: grapes dried on racks after the harvest, pressed into a thick red that tasted of raisin and blueberry. Dry Sagrantino only took over in the 1970s. Montefalco Sagrantino became a DOCG in 1992. The boom of the 1990s followed, and Arnaldo Caprai's 25 Anni, named for the estate's 25th anniversary, became its best-known bottle.
The zone is small: about 1,000 hectares of hill country south of Assisi, with Montefalco's walled town at its centre. The consortium counts four soil types. Yellow sands and cemented gravels ring the town itself. Clays and lake sands run under Bevagna and Bastardo. River gravels line the valley floors, and marls and sandstones surface across the rest. Summers run at 18 to 23C on average and the land drains well. That is why a grape this tannic ripens here and struggles almost everywhere else.
What arrives in the glass is a violet so dark it is almost black. Blackberry, plum and liquorice lead, then black pepper, cinnamon, tobacco and a dusty earth note, over tannin that tests put above Aglianico and Tannat. Young, it needs an hour in a decanter and a plate of fat. Ten years in, it is velvet. The 1990s boom brought a big, oaky style aimed at export. Today most estates, Adanti and Antonelli among them, pull back towards something more austere in big old barrels. Caprai's Collepiano and 25 Anni, Colpetrone's Memoira and Lungarotti's Secco are the bottles most UK shops carry, from about £20 to £45.
On the table
What to eat with Montefalco Sagrantino
Slow-cooked lamb, game, roast pork and aged pecorino: the tannin needs fat, and the Passito wants blue cheese or dark chocolate.
In-depth guide
Montefalco Sagrantino, answered
Blackberry, plum and liquorice with black pepper, cinnamon and tobacco, over some of the firmest tannin in Italy. It is inky, bone dry and 14 to 15%. With ten years in bottle the tannin softens and the fruit turns to prune and fig.
At least 33 months from the 1st of December after the harvest. The dry wine spends at least 12 of them in oak, and both versions then rest four months in bottle. So the earliest a bottle can be sold is a little over three years after the grapes were picked.
Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG is 100% Sagrantino, aged more than three years and built to keep. Montefalco Rosso DOC is a Sangiovese-led blend, 60 to 80% Sangiovese with 10 to 25% Sagrantino, lighter, cheaper and ready sooner.
The sweet version, made the old way. The bunches dry on racks for at least two months, then ferment on the skins to 18% with 80 to 180 grams of sugar a litre. It ages the same 33 months. Expect raisin, fig and blueberry with firm tannin behind the sugar.
Colpetrone's Memoira is the cheapest full DOCG in UK shops at about £20. Arnaldo Caprai's Collepiano at about £37 is the benchmark, and the 25 Anni the icon. Antonelli, Adanti, Scacciadiavoli and Lungarotti sit between £25 and £35.
From about five years after the vintage to twenty. The consortium rated 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2020 as outstanding, 2017 as merely good. Decant a young bottle for an hour and serve it at 18C.