Vino Nobile di Montepulciano

The wine must be at least 70 per cent Sangiovese, which in Montepulciano goes by the name Prugnolo Gentile. It may not be sold until it has aged two years from the first of January after the harvest; a Riserva ages three, six months of them in bottle. Since the 2021 vintage the label may also name one of twelve Pievi, the old parish districts into which the territory was divided from late Roman and Lombard times.

The wine has been traded rather than simply drunk at home for over a thousand years: sales are recorded from 789, and a document of 1350 set out the first terms for its export. In the seventeenth century Francesco Redi called it the king of every wine, and the words "Vino Nobile" first appear in a travel account of 1787. It became a DOC in 1966 and a DOCG in 1980.