Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Quercegobbe, Toscana, Petra 2024
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Why this wine
A single-vineyard Merlot from the Tuscan coast, made in a deliberately fresh style: whole-berry handling, long maceration and only 30% new oak, finished in concrete to keep the aromatics intact. It offers the plushness people want from Maremma Merlot without the weight, and at a price well below the region's better-known names.
At a glance
- Grape
- Merlot 88%, Cabernet Franc 12%
- Region
- Tuscany, Italy
- Alcohol
- 14.50%
- Body
- Medium
- Acidity
- Medium
- Tannins
- Medium
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Medium (5-10 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Red Meat, Pasta, Cheese
How it tastes
Wild red fruit and blueberry with a citrus lift, then thyme, rosemary and a balsamic thread of Mediterranean scrub. Dense but agile on the palate, medium-bodied with energetic tannins and a fresh, faintly sanguine finish. Merlot 88%, Cabernet Franc 12%.
The producer
Petra was founded by Vittorio Moretti after a 1996 trip to the châteaux of Bordeaux sent him looking for the right ground in Italy; he and his second daughter Francesca settled on the district between Castiglione della Pescaia and Suvereto, in the Maremma among the hills of the Val di Cornia overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, and in 2001 began building the winery designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta into a hillside. This wine comes from the Quercegobbe vineyard at San Lorenzo, where flysch a palombini soils of calcareous clay full of stones and pebbles, along with the blue clay of the Apennines, limit vigour and keep acidity up; the vines were planted in 1998 at 6,200 per hectare, Guyot-trained, with yields kept deliberately low. Parcels were selected precisely, optically sorted, handled as whole berries and macerated for a total of 45 days, then matured 12 months in French oak barriques with 30% new wood and six months in concrete before bottling. In 2024 a mild winter refilled water reserves and a steady spring brought even flowering; a hot, dry summer tempered by cool nights preserved aromatics, early September rain balanced sugar and acidity, and the fruit came in before the later rains.
Food and drinking
Serve at 16-18°C. Good with roast lamb, herb-crusted pork loin, pasta with a tomato and sausage ragù and semi-hard sheep's cheese. Drinking well now and will hold five to ten years; half an hour in a decanter suits it. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.