Winemaker Notes
Pairs excellent with roasts and spit-roasted meats, grilled meats, game,braised meats, and aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Caparzo's Riserva blends the cream of the crop of their vineyards in both the north and south of Montalcino. It spends one year in tonneaux and two years in 30hl French oak casks. It starts off all pretty and red-fruited on the nose with cherry, raspberry and lovely liquorice notes, but then the palate reveals its serious side: it's densely packed and powerful rather than elegant, though substantial fruit balances out the firm structure.
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James Suckling
Beautiful core of ripe fruit and intensity with cherries and plums and hints of cedar and flowers. Full-bodied, tight and focused with a polished texture and length. Solid and gorgeous.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva is a terrific wine that feels very connected to its territory, both stylistically and in terms of its personalty. This is a mid-weight effort with a streamlined mouthfeel that glides over the palate with polished gleam. The bouquet is bright and buoyant with dried cherry aromas followed by balsam herb, dried mint, licorice and camphor smoke. The wine already shows an evolved bouquet, and although you could age it longer, it tastes great straight out of the gate.
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.