Winemaker Notes
The color is ruby, tending towards garnet with age. The nose is penetrating, ample, and very complex, with echoes of wild berry fruit. This wine has a dry, warm, solid, and harmonious palate, combining delicacy and austerity, and is persistent.
Pair with roasts, grilled or braised meats along with game and ripe cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
A round, succulent Brunello penetrated by a beam of bright cherry, with accents of rose, strawberry, mineral and cigar box. Charming yet solidly built, with dense, dusty tannins for support and a lasting impression of sweet fruit. Offers terrific balance and length. Best from 2025 through 2043.
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Wine Enthusiast
The nose is defined by the fresh earthiness of walking in the park after a storm, but fruit undertones of blood orange and strawberry provide nuance. On the palate, raspberries underscore the sweetness of the fruit, while the damp soil element lingers in the background. Grippy but polished tannins serve as an entourage for tenacious acid that carries through the finish.
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James Suckling
Open and aromatically complex with plums, sour cherries, sandalwood, thyme, amber and chocolate. Firm and structured with chewy yet polished tannins. Full-bodied. Nicely framed, long and thoughtful. Drink from 2024.
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Jeb Dunnuck
There is a bit more richness and solar feel in the 2017 Brunello Di Montalcino Riserva with its notes of black cherry, licorice candy, and scorched earth, and it has more concentration on the palate as well, with ripe blackberry, black tea, and turned soil. Fresh, with ripe tannins and a warming finish, it offers a lot of pleasure. This was my favorite of three wines from Caparzo. Drink 2024-2032.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Packaged in its distinctive black label, the hot-vintage Caparzo 2017 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva (with 20,000 bottles made) reveals a dark garnet color with black ruby and medium-thick concentration. The wine is already evolved and open-knit with thick aromas of baked fruit and blackberry confit. There is a note of sweetness. It shows broad flavors and skips over the finer nuances, and it delivers a very high 15% alcohol content. I recommend a near-term drinking window for this bottle.
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Decanter
A winemaker’s selection of lots from the estate’s diverse vineyard sites, Caparzo’s Riserva is unabashedly rich, ripe and ready. Traces of scented potpourri evolve into mature leather and smoked meat nuances. The fruit-laden palate of plum and macerated cherry is ample and weighty, and dense, layered tannins add to the heft. While this doesn’t lack stuffing, it could do with some brightening respite.
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.