Since my last visit to Montefalco in northern Italy, the local red grape Sagrantino got an incredible reputation boost: it may be less likely to give people a headache than almost every other red wine.

According to a UC Davis study last year, a naturally-occurring compound called quercetin – also found in capers, dill, coriander, red onions and other plants – is responsible for red-wine headaches. And according to an unrelated study from Italy, the grape varieties lowest in quercetin are Sagrantino and Tannat.

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Sagrantino is a fascinating grape anyway: thick skinned, full of seeds, high in tannin. Sagrantino tends to take years in the bottle to come around, but when it does, it has tremendous depth and complexity. It's a great wine if made well but Montefalco growers have less experience with it than you'd think, as it was almost exclusively made into sweet wine until about 30 years ago.

Nobody I spoke to in Montefalco had heard of the UC Davis study. Most know what quercetin is ("quercetina" in Italian) because it's a common compound. But none of them knew that "Sagrantino, no headache!" could be a marketing point.

However, what could also be a marketing point is, "Montefalco Sagrantino: Now easier to drink young!" Because that's true, and it's strikingly different than even two years ago.

Also, "Montefalco Sagrantino: Wine experts can't identify it blind against the great red wines of the world." Because that happened.

Wine educator Cristina Mercuri ran a seminar where about 100 wine experts from around the world were poured 10 wines blind and asked to guess if they were Montefalco Sagrantino. The ringers were Guigal Château d'Ampuis Côte-Rôtie, Château Montrose Saint-Estèphe, Franchetti Passopisciaro from Etna, Messorio Le Macchiole Merlot from Bolgheri and Ridge Lytton Estate Petite Sirah.

As a group, we did not cover ourselves in glory. I got eight of 10 right, only a B, but I'm bragging because every wine expert I spoke with did worse, which was the point. If we can't tell Montefalco Sagrantino from these wines that (except for the Ridge) cost a lot more ...

"I deliberately wanted to put in all the big guys to make a comparison," Mercuri said afterward. Mission accomplished.

"Big guys" is the right term for Sagrantino. There's no way around this: it's a naturally tannic wine, and the main way to make it more drinkable, if you're not going to make sweet "passito", is to leave the grapes on the vine so that the tannins ripen. But by doing that, you're going to get more alcohol. Many of the best wines in the region are about 15.5 percent.

"Before, we pick the grape with too many green tannins," said Valentino Valentini, third-generation proprietor of Bocale. "Now we have one-half degree of alcohol more, but I think it's better."

As much as I personally like a restrained-alcohol red wine, I agree with Valentini. There are some 20-year-old Sagrantinos at less than 15 percent alcohol that still aren't as drinkable as more recent releases.

"I think, as a group, we're getting better and better," said Alessandro Lunelli, director of Tenute Lunelli. "There was a big change around 2016. Change in our experience in working the field."

In Lunelli's case, they do three consecutive harvests of the same vineyards, so that each vine can be picked when it's ripe. "By changing two or three days, it makes a difference," Lunelli said.

Arnaldo Caprai winery, the pioneer of dry versions of Sagrantino in the 1980s, has invested heavily in new tannin-taming fermentation methods. The most recent is a Michel Rolland innovation: "vinification integrale", in which whole berries are placed in new oak barrels that are rolled back and forth three times a day for 40 days. Because the berries are never crushed, there is less extraction.

"When we discover Sagrantino, we ask, what can we do?" Rolland says in a video for the winery. "What we can do is make it softer with more elegance. There is no pumping over; no pushing down. Just rotation to mix skin and juice."

Old ways

But technological innovation isn't necessary. Fongoli winery has been biodynamic since the year 2000 and is a throwback to a century ago in a lot of ways. They use a style of vine training called Doppio Palco that is no longer allowed in the region because it doesn't provide a minimum – not maximum – yield of grapes (which is a crazy regulation). But their underproductive vines are grandfathered in. They ferment some white grapes in open plastic vats with foot treading; for Sagrantino they use concrete vats or amphora.

"In the last year we're trying to make the Sagrantino fresher, but not with a new style of winemaking," said Ludovica Fongoli. "We harvest when it is very ripe and we ferment in concrete. We want to have the old traditional style."

At the co-op Terre de Trinci, winemaker Nicola Mattoni removes the seeds from the bottom of the fermentation tank after one day, because she says the seed tannins are harsher.

All of this work in vineyards and wineries has created a wine that can stand up to great wines from the northern Rhone and Bordeaux, not to mention Tuscany and Sicily. Now you don't have to wait as long to drink it – and it might not give grief to your headache-prone friends.

Before I list the Montefalco Sagrantinos I recommend, I want to plug the town of Montefalco for tourism. In May I visited the beautiful walled, hilltop town of San Gimignano and wrote about the wines. San Gimignano is packed with tourists, especially American tourists. Restaurants are full. There's a long line for gelato. I hear American accents everywhere.

In June I went to Montefalco, another walled, hilltop town about 200 kilometers south. It is practically a dead ringer for San Gimignano: also beautiful, also great food, and much better known for red wine, and most American tourists in Italy order red wine. But Montefalco is quiet. I don't have official stats, but it seems to get one-fifth the tourists of San Gimignano. Why? Because San Gimignano is in Tuscany, and Montefalco is not. There is your off-the-beaten-path Italian tourism tip of the day.

Now for the wines! Most Sagrantinos will evolve for many years and these are no exception, but most of these are also surprisingly drinkable now.

Scacciadiavoli Metodo Classico Brut Rosé NV You don't expect to see a very tannic red grape turned into an elegant sparkling wine. Scacciadiavoli owner Liù Pambuffetti loves sparkling wine so much that she bought a Champagne brand, Marie Clugny. Scacciadiavoli is the only producer to use Sagrantino for bubbly. It works surprisingly well. The grapes are picked very early – just after veraison – so the wine is a pale orangish-brown in color. It's not especially aromatic, but has a nice light cherry flavor that segues into an elegant, dry finish.

2019 Scacciadiavoli Montefalco Sagrantino This one stumped nearly an entire room of wine experts with its elegant red fruit, restrained alcohol and very smooth tannins. How could a Sagrantino this good be this low in alcohol (14 percent)? Pambuffetti's interesting answer is that it's because they make the bubbly, so they analyze the grapes much earlier than other farmers and they aren't afraid to pick early because they do so anyway. "Scacciadiavoli," incidentally, means "chase away the devil", based on a famous exorcist who once lived nearby. Now that's terroir.

2017 Fongoli Montefalco Sagrantino From a very natural winery (though they do add sulfites), this was one of my favorite wines from the region. There's enough lively freshness to make the tannins feel negligible, with red plum fruit trending to black with some licorice on the long finish. Cement-tank fermentation gives it a minerally note. Drinking extremely well now but I wonder how delicious it might be in five years. Fongoli and Scacciadiavoli are two wineries that contradict the current local wisdom of picking later, yet make excellent wines anyway.

2015 Fongoli Decius Umbria Rosso Passito Many of these wineries make a traditional Sagrantino passito with some residual sugar. I liked almost every one I tried; it's a good style for the grape. I pick this one to recommend because it will appeal to Amarone fans. It's not very sweet, delivering blueberry fruit with notes of Christmas spice, and some sweetness on the finish.

2018 Le Thadee Carlo Re Montefalco Sagrantino The first vintage of this wine from winemaker/owner Massimo Giacchi, who went independent after working for others. The winery is most known for its expensive white wine "128+," made from a single 128+-year-old pre-phylloxera vine that is grown the way vines used to be in Umbria: attached to a tree. This wine shows Giacchi is not a one-tree-pony. It's juicy and rich, yet elegant, with well-managed tannins.

2020 Arnaldo Caprai 25 Anni Montefalco Sagrantino If you like big, rich wines, look no further. This impressive wine made via Michel Rolland's "vinification integrale" system has generous layers of dark cherry with notes of dark chocolate, with promising hints of flowers and anise that peek through on the finish. You can sense a mountain of tannin, but it doesn't grip. Very nice now but it's sure to develop more complexity.

2018 Terre de Trinci Ugolino Montefalco Sagrantino This wine is unusual in that it's from a co-op with 110 vigneron members, yet it comes from only one 50-year-old vineyard that was planted by winemaker Nicola Mattoni's grandfather. They vinify it separately every year but only release it when they decide the vintage is good enough. This was the first Ugolino release since 2012. It delivers lively cherry and black fruit with notes of licorice. It's tannic but approachable now, but I'd wait a couple years.

2016 Romanelli Terra Cupa Montefalco Sagrantino Lively blueberry fruit with notes of black tea and earth on the finish. Very well-managed tannins, not least because the winery held onto it so long before release.

2019 Cocco Phonsano Montefalco Sagrantino I'm a big fan of owner/winemaker Ilaria Cocco, who does everything herself, including building her own winery from scratch. Now she's building a house beside it so she can stop commuting from 100 km away. Cocco's theory of dealing with tannins is to make a very fresh wine that will make you salivate, washing the tannins from your mouth. She succeeds, delivering fresh red fruit with a touch of herb on the finish. Comes in a stylish squat bottle that I hope fits in your wine cellar.

2020 Tenute Lunelli Carapace Montefalco Sagrantino Here's a wine named after the winery. The Lunelli family owns the Ferrari sparkling winery in Trento, which is pretty lucrative, so they spent a fortune to hire an artist to build an impressive winery based on a turtle shell, or "carapace." Architecture fans visit all the time. Stay for this rich wine with very smooth tannins and a likable perfumey note on the finish.

2019 Bocale Montefalco Sagrantino Tannins are still a little tight on this wine, but the juicy red plum fruit wins out at the end. It's still too early to drink, but I tasted a vertical of these wines and if this ages like its predecessors, it's going to be beautiful – in five or 10 years.

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