From the atlas
Giodo
At A Glance
Producer: Podere Giodo Region: Tuscany, Italy Appellation: Brunello di Montalcino DOCG Grape: Sangiovese Estate size: Six hectares Location: Southern Montalcino, between Sant'Angelo in Colle and Sant'Antimo
The Producer
Carlo Ferrini spent the better part of two decades as one of Tuscany's most sought-after consulting winemakers, shaping wine at estates that would appear on anyone's short list of the region's finest addresses. In 2002, after years of looking, he bought his first hectare in Montalcino. The estate he built there, Podere Giodo, is his personal work: six hectares on the southern slopes of Montalcino's hill, planted to Sangiovese, and named for his parents. Giovanna and Donatello gave him the name Giodo.
Giodo is not large. Six hectares in Brunello terms is enough to make a focused, selective wine and very little room for anything else. Ferrini farmed the land himself and built a cellar into the hillside, repurposing the excavated rock as the cellar's external walls. The Brunello di Montalcino DOCG is the estate's one wine from these parcels.
Place
Montalcino is a medieval hilltop town in southern Tuscany, around forty kilometres south of Siena. The Brunello di Montalcino DOCG covers the slopes and lower ground surrounding the town, and its rules are among the most demanding in Italy: Brunello must be 100% Sangiovese, aged a minimum of five years from harvest, with at least two of those years in oak and four months in bottle before release.
Giodo's six hectares sit on the southern side of Montalcino, in the corridor between the villages of Sant'Angelo in Colle and Sant'Antimo. Southern Montalcino receives more sun than the cooler north-facing slopes, giving Sangiovese fuller ripeness and, in good years, deeper colour and more generous fruit weight. The wine stays high in acidity and tannin regardless: that is the grape, not just the slope.
Soil And Site
The six hectares run along the southern arc of the Montalcino hill. The location between Sant'Angelo in Colle and Sant'Antimo places the estate in an area that has long drawn producers seeking riper, more southerly expressions of Brunello. Giodo's vineyards face the warm valley that runs toward the Orcia river, and the scale of the estate, six hectares, keeps parcelling and selection focused.
Story
Ferrini began identifying land in Montalcino at a point when his consulting career had already given him deep familiarity with Sangiovese across Tuscany. He chose the southern slopes deliberately. By the time he purchased his first hectare in 2002, he had a clear picture of which Sangiovese clones he wanted. He selected eight clones for Giodo based on what had impressed him during decades of work elsewhere, planting an estate built from that accumulated knowledge.
The cellar took the same considered approach. It was constructed partially underground, cut into the hillside so that the cellar sits within the landscape rather than above it. The rock that came out of the ground went back into the walls.
Vineyards And Cellar
Ferrini planted the six hectares with eight Sangiovese clones chosen from his consulting experience. Clone selection at this scale is a long-term decision: different clones contribute different aromatic profiles, ripening rates, and tannin character, and the blend of eight across a small estate gives the wine more aromatic complexity than a single-clone planting would. Grapes are hand-harvested and moved by gravity into stainless steel tanks for fermentation, keeping the fruit intact and avoiding pump damage.
After fermentation, the wines rest in traditional concrete vats and large terracotta jars before bottling. Both vessels are oxygen-permeable but neutral in flavour, so the wine's development happens without oak character being added. Additional bottle ageing follows before release. La Quinta, the estate's second wine, takes a different route: it ages in cocciopesto amphorae, a fired terracotta vessel made with ceramic fragment inclusions, which gives the wine oxygen contact without any wood contact and develops what the estate describes as crisp, luscious wild red berryfruit.
Wines
Brunello di Montalcino DOCG is the centrepiece. One hundred percent Sangiovese from the six Montalcino hectares, aged to DOCG minimum requirements and beyond. The wine shows the typical Brunello architecture: substantial tannin, bright acidity, long cellaring potential.
La Quinta is a Toscana Rosso IGT from the same estate, aged in cocciopesto amphorae. It sits in a different register from the Brunello: lighter in frame, aromatic, with wild red berryfruit and a texture shaped by the amphora contact. Specific blend composition and ageing duration are not publicly stated.
Alberelli di Giodo Nerello Mascalese Sicilia DOC is a separate project entirely, sourcing Nerello Mascalese from Mount Etna in Sicily. Nerello Mascalese from volcanic ground is pale in colour but carries firm tannin and a stony mineral quality that comes through alongside red cherry and dried herb. The wine has a different personality from anything Giodo produces in Montalcino: lighter in body, tighter in tannin, and marked by the volcanic character of Etna's soils.
In The Glass
The Brunello di Montalcino has impressive length. In the mouth, the acidity is high and clean, the tannins dense but not aggressive, and the wine finishes long with the kind of dry, slightly mineral pull that Sangiovese from southern Montalcino slopes produces in warm years.
La Quinta is brighter and more immediate: wild red berries, a fresh, lively texture from the amphora ageing, and less of the weight and tannin mass that Brunello carries. It is a wine for earlier drinking.
The Nerello Mascalese from Etna is spare and volcanic: pale ruby, red cherry, dried herbs, and a firm tannin grip that is tighter than its colour suggests. The mineral quality is sharp and saline, a direct expression of the lava-soil ground it comes from.
A Bottle To Understand It
Brunello di Montalcino is the bottle to start with. It is the wine Ferrini built Giodo to produce, grown from eight hand-selected clones on southern Montalcino slopes, aged through concrete and terracotta before extended bottle rest, and released only when the estate considers it ready. The 2019 opens with black raspberries, leather, sandalwood, blood orange, and rosemary, and the depth underneath makes it a wine that will continue developing for a decade or more. High acidity, dense tannin, long dry finish. Start here to understand what Ferrini was building when he left the consulting world and planted these six hectares for himself.
Anecdote
Giodo's 2019 Brunello di Montalcino drew significant critical attention when its scores were released. The cellar's excavated rock formed its external walls.
Final Word
Giodo is what happens when a winemaker who has spent decades learning other people's land finally farms his own. Six hectares, eight Sangiovese clones, a cellar cut from the hillside, and a Brunello di Montalcino that holds its own against anything the denomination produces. The name is a private tribute; the wine is not.
Sources
- https://poderegiodo.it/en/
- https://poderegiodo.it/en/origins/
- https://poderegiodo.it/en/winecellar/
- https://www.lagunacellar.com/giodo-2019
- https://panebiancowines.com/wine-page/alberelli-di-giodo-nerello-mascalese-sicilia-doc/