The 2022 Galatrona, 100% Merlot, is another super-attractive wine from Petrolo. It offers lovely up-front appeal to match its easygoing personality. Blue/purplish fruit, licorice, lavender, spice and mocha meld together. The 2022 naturally does not have the structure or depth of the top years, but that simply was not possible in this vintage.

The Petrolo 2022 Val d'Arno di Sopra Galatrona is a beautiful wine with an elegantly focused and streamlined style. Proprietor Luca Sanjust describes this vintage as "the most Tuscan version of Galatrona" he has produced, and he remarks on the ability of Merlot, the grape used here, to resemble Sangiovese in the unique Valdarno territory. Winemaking has been tweaked to produce the wine in an initially more reductive style to ensure better and longer bottle evolution. The team is working with better woods, neutral oak and bigger capacities. There is more work with the lees and no racking. The wine shows a core of dark fruit with wild berries and pressed rose. This medium-plus Tuscan Merlot concludes with lasting freshness. The Galatrona site has mixed soils with sand, rocks and clay. Two geological plates meet at this spot, and the clay pan folds underground as a result. The site is surrounded by cooling forests.

Approachable already, scents of dark berries, chocolate, coffee beans and meadow flowers rise from the glass. In the mouth it is exhilaratingly grippy and fresh, with lifted violet notes and balsamic herbs ushering in a silky mid-palate of vibrant dark fruits. Petrolo's single-vineyard Merlot in purezza is beautifully sculpted in 2022. Owner Luca Sanjust and his team have done well to adjust the winemaking to tease out the quality of expression inherent in the grapes by using larger, more neutral barrels and following a reductive methodology during fermentation. ‘2021 is more austere in terms of taste; 2022 is more bright’, confirms Sanjust.