San Giusto a Rentennano’s Percarlo is the Gaiole estate’s flagship Toscana IGT, a pure Sangiovese drawn from its best fruit and built for long aging. The Martini di Cigala family farms about 30 hectares in the Chianti Classico zone under certified organic practices, working largely by hand and favoring a traditional, low-intervention approach in the cellar. For Percarlo, the estate emphasizes strict selection and very low yields, with grapes chosen “bunch by bunch” from top parcels (winery technical notes).

In style, Percarlo is not positioned as a lighter, early-drinking Sangiovese. The winery describes long macerations (up to roughly 35 days) and élevage of around 20–22 months in French oak followed by extended bottle maturation before release—choices that typically translate into deeper color, more structure, and greater reserve in youth.

The 2022 vintage has already drawn an excellent critical response. Vinous awarded it 97 points, with Antonio Galloni calling it “seriously impressive” and explicitly framing it as a wine for patience: “I can’t wait to see how it ages,” he writes, adding, “I would not dream of touching a bottle any time soon” (Vinous, July 2025). Galloni’s note captures a concentrated, layered profile—“sumptuous and packed to the core”—with “dark red fruit, spice, cedar, new leather, pomegranate and blood orange,” plus lingering “rose petal, cinnamon and dried herbs” on what he calls a “substantial finish” (Galloni, Vinous). He also reports the 2022 “spent 22 months in oak, mostly 30hl casks with some 500-liter tonneaux,” a regimen that suggests a balance of oxygenation and texture without relying solely on small barrels.

With its organic sourcing, rigorous selection, and clearly age-worthy structure, Percarlo 2022 looks like a benchmark, cellar-forward Sangiovese from one of Gaiole’s most exacting estates.