La Serena· Montalcino

The heart of La Serena is a single hectare of vines planted in 1970, the year the estate began, which Andrea Mantengoli reserves for the Gemini Riserva. Half a century in the same ground gives that wine its depth, earth, iron, dried rose, built for the next twenty years.

Eleven hectares in all, on galestro, clay and limestone between 320 and 380 metres, worked in the traditional Montalcino manner: no new oak, four years in large botti, the Brunello left to speak plainly. Cherry, dried herb, leather, the structure resolving slowly.

This is classical Montalcino without theatre, and that restraint is exactly why I bring it in. The Gemini, from those oldest vines, is the one to cellar.