Il Palazzone Winery Guide

EXPLORE ALL OUR RECOMMENDED ITALIAN WINERIES

Last updated: November 25, 2023

Winery Overview

There are many contestants for Brunello di Montalcino’s prettiest estate title. Still, we believe Il Palazzone is ten leaps ahead of the rest: the views alone are to die for, while the wines produced at this boutique winery are some of the finest made today in the venerable Brunello di Montalcino region.

Il Palazzone started their life as the dream of one man, Mario Bollag, who had spent years surrounded by fine food and wine and yearned to make his own. The son of a Swiss lawyer from Basel, Mario traveled the world in his younger years before setting up a home in San Francisco, where he ran a successful travel business. Yet, his passion for wine continued. So, after much searching and deliberation, Mario took the plunge and purchased a small property in the Montalcino region of Tuscany in the early 1980s.

His project soon became the talk of the town, and Mario’s wines were quickly recognized as some of the finest of the new generation of Brunello di Montalcino. However, in 2000, Mario decided to move onto new pastures, and Il Palazzone was sold to Richard Parsons, the former CEO of Time Warner and a man for whom wine was a serious business. Assembling a crack team, including British estate manager Laura Gray and winemaker Paolo Vagaggini, Parsons set Il Palazzone on a course toward greatness.

Indeed, since his purchase in 2000, Parsons has invested a lot of energy and money into making Il Palazzone a formidable name in Brunello di Montalcino, including funding the construction of a state-of-the-art winery completed in 2012. Yet, at the heart of this estate’s philosophy is great respect for the region’s traditions, including aging wines in large oak barrels for several years, and above all else, respect for the unique terroir of Brunello di Montalcino. In this regard, Il Palazzone is way ahead of the curve – cultivating three very separate vineyard sites, the estate blends wines from these distinct terroirs to forge something much greater than the sum of its parts.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding – Il Palazzone continues to make a superlative range of remarkably consistent wines despite the vintage variations seen in Brunello di Montalcino. A Super-Tuscan blend is concentrated, powerful, and impressively structured, while the multi-vintage blend Rosso del Palazzone is the best value deal in Tuscany today. Ultimately, for our money, the Brunello di Montalcino Riserva is the cream of the crop, a wine that demonstrates the essential magic inherent to this idyllic corner of Tuscany. Powerful yet balanced, structured yet approachable, and complex and user-friendly, it is a wine that stands the test of time.