Is Vino Nobile made from the Montepulciano grape?

No — and this is the great confusion of Italian wine. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is a Sangiovese wine, named for the Tuscan hill town of Montepulciano where it's made. Locally the grape is called Prugnolo Gentile, a strain of Sangiovese, and it must make up the bulk of the blend. The [Montepulciano grape](/en/it/wine/montepulciano/) is a completely different, unrelated variety grown mostly in Abruzzo, on the other side of Italy, that makes Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. Same word, two totally different things: one is a place, the other is a grape.

How does Vino Nobile compare to Brunello?

They're close cousins — both Sangiovese, both from southern Tuscan hill towns, both holding top DOCG status. Brunello, from Montalcino, is 100% Sangiovese, aged longer, more powerful and far more expensive. Vino Nobile, from Montepulciano just to the east, allows a little blending, is released sooner and costs noticeably less — often for wine of real quality. If Brunello is the grand statement, Vino Nobile is the connoisseur's value: nearly as serious, half the fuss, and historically the one the nobles actually drank.

Why is it called 'Vino Nobile' (the noble wine)?

Because the nobility drank it. The wine of Montepulciano was prized at aristocratic and papal tables from the Renaissance on, and the 'noble' tag stuck to it by the 18th century, long before modern appellations existed. Montepulciano was a wealthy, cultured town, and its wine travelled in a way most Tuscan reds didn't. Vino Nobile also holds a small place in history as one of the very first wines granted Italy's DOCG rank in 1980.

What is Rosso di Montepulciano?

The junior appellation — the same Prugnolo Gentile Sangiovese from the same zone, released young without the longer ageing Vino Nobile requires. It's fresher, cheaper and made to drink now, exactly as Rosso di Montalcino is to Brunello. If you want to taste Montepulciano's fruit without waiting or spending, the Rosso is the easy, honest way in.

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano

Here's a wine with an image problem, and none of it its own fault. Say "Montepulciano" to a wine drinker and half of them picture a cheap, cheerful red from Abruzzo. But Vino Nobile di Montepulciano has nothing to do with that. It's Sangiovese, it comes from a Renaissance jewel of a Tuscan hill town, it was drunk by popes — and it's the most underrated of the three great Tuscan reds.

You've now tasted Sangiovese as everyday genius in Chianti Classico and as monument in Brunello. This is the third face: the noble one, hiding in plain sight.

The name that fools everyone

Untangle the confusion first, because it costs this wine dearly. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is not made from the Montepulciano grape. It's a Sangiovese wine — locally the grape is called Prugnolo Gentile — named for the town of Montepulciano in southeastern Tuscany. The Montepulciano grape is a wholly different, unrelated variety grown mostly across the country in Abruzzo, where it makes the easygoing Montepulciano d'Abruzzo.

One word, two completely different wines: here a place, there a grape. Get that straight and you've cleared the single biggest hurdle between you and one of Tuscany's best-value reds. For the grape's story in full, see Sangiovese.

Why "noble"

The name is old, and earned. Montepulciano was a wealthy, cultured Renaissance town, and its wine travelled to tables that most Tuscan reds never reached — aristocratic, ecclesiastical, papal. By the 18th century it was simply the noble wine, vino nobile, and the tag stuck. When Italy created its top DOCG appellation tier in 1980, Vino Nobile was in the very first group to receive it — a nod to a pedigree that predates Brunello's fame by centuries.

Montepulciano's wine was drinking at popes' tables while Brunello didn't yet exist. That history is the quiet swagger under a wine most people overlook.

How it tastes, and how it compares

Vino Nobile is a close cousin to Brunello — both southern-Tuscan Sangiovese, both serious — but it plays a gentler hand. It allows a little blending where Brunello demands purity, it's released sooner, and it costs noticeably less. Expect a savoury, red-cherried, earthy wine with more elegance than heft: firm but not fierce, structured but sooner ready. Where Brunello asks for a decade, a good Vino Nobile is generous at five or six years and rewards a little more.

And as everywhere in Tuscany, there's a junior partner for drinking now: Rosso di Montepulciano, the same fruit released young, fresh and inexpensive. Buy it the way you'd buy Rosso di Montalcino — the honest everyday face of a great zone.

A town built over its wine

Half the pleasure of Montepulciano is the town itself. It's a handsome Renaissance hill town of honey stone and long views, quieter than Montalcino and far quieter than the Chianti circuit — the zone for people who don't want a crowd. And its signature move is underground: the cantine storiche, historic cellars tunnelled straight into the soft tufa beneath the streets, where many estates still age their wine. You can walk from a sunlit piazza down into a cool, vaulted cellar without leaving the town walls.

The town leans into its wine culture, too. Every August the contrade — Montepulciano's historic districts — send teams to roll heavy wine barrels uphill through the streets in the Bravìo delle Botti, a punishing, roaring race that ends the town's Renaissance festival week. It's the kind of thing that reminds you these wines aren't museum pieces: they're the working pride of a living town. At the table, Vino Nobile wants the local cooking it was raised on — pici pasta with garlicky aglione sauce, grilled meats, pecorino from nearby Pienza. Savoury food for a savoury wine.

Where to taste it

The town's own historic cellars make Montepulciano unusually walkable for a wine trip — you can taste at several cantine on foot, which almost nowhere else in Tuscany allows. For the estate that has pushed the zone hardest, go to Avignonesi just outside town: biodynamic, ambitious, the most serious address in Montepulciano, and — as Part 6 will get to — the maker of a Vin Santo that's one of the rarest bottles in Italy. Book ahead; the best cellars here run on appointments even where the town tastings don't.

We've now met all three faces of Tuscan Sangiovese — the everyday, the monumental, the noble. But an hour and a half west, on a flat strip of coast that had no wine reputation at all fifty years ago, a handful of aristocrats did something heretical: they tore up the rulebook, planted French grapes by the sea, and made wines so good the law had to bend around them. No Sangiovese. No tradition. Just Cabernet, Merlot, and nerve. That's Bolgheri and the Super Tuscans, and Part 5 is where Tuscany breaks its own rules.