Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This vintage produced beautiful, rich and exuberant wines across the board and is remembered as one of the best in modern Montalcino history. The Altesino 2004 Brunello di Montalcino Montosoli is drinking beautifully right now thanks to its silky mouthful and elegant flavors of dried berry, earth and toasted spice. There's a point of acidity and a lingering mineral note, which are the characteristic signatures of the Montosoli vineyard and its unique shale soils.
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Wine Spectator
Offers alluring aromas, featuring ripe fruit, truffle, juniper and leafy, vegetal notes. This has some heft to it, evoking gamy and saline elements, a tannic edge and a mineral undercurrent. Fine length.—Non-blind Altesino/Caparzo Retrospective (April 2022). Drink now.
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Wine Enthusiast
We preferred Altesino’s base Brunello to its cru selection from the estate’s special 10-acre vineyard—but only by the smallest of margins. Montosoli is a tremendous wine with impressive intensity and staying power that takes shape as cherry, tobacco, spice and bursting blueberry. Drink from 2010 through 2020.
Among Italy's elite red grape varieties, Sangiovese has the perfect intersection of bright red fruit and savory earthiness and is responsible for the best red wines of Tuscany. While it is best known as the chief component of Chianti, it is also the main grape in Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and reaches the height of its power and intensity in the complex, long-lived Brunello di Montalcino. Somm Secret—Sangiovese doubles under the alias, Nielluccio, on the French island of Corsica where it produces distinctly floral and refreshing reds and rosés.
Famous for its bold, layered and long-lived red, Brunello di Montalcino, the town of Montalcino is about 70 miles south of Florence, and has a warmer and drier climate than that of its neighbor, Chianti. The Sangiovese grape is king here, as it is in Chianti, but Montalcino has its own clone called Brunello.
The Brunello vineyards of Montalcino blanket the rolling hills surrounding the village and fan out at various elevations, creating the potential for Brunello wines expressing different styles. From the valleys, where deeper deposits of clay are found, come wines typically bolder, more concentrated and rich in opulent black fruit. The hillside vineyards produce wines more concentrated in red fruits and floral aromas; these sites reach up to over 1,600 feet and have shallow soils of rocks and shale.
Brunello di Montalcino by law must be aged a minimum of four years, including two years in barrel before realease and once released, typically needs more time in bottle for its drinking potential to be fully reached. The good news is that Montalcino makes a “baby brother” version. The wines called Rosso di Montalcino are often made from younger vines, aged for about a year before release, offer extraordinary values and are ready to drink young.