Winemaker Notes
Try pairing with roasts and split-roasted meats, grilled meats, game, braised meats, and aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of plums and chocolate with hints of hazelnut. Medium body, a solid core of ripe fruit and a rich and long finish. Very fine and polished character. Better in 2019.
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Wine Enthusiast
Enticing scents of red berry, baking spice, Mediterranean scrub and a hint of eucalyptus slowly emerge. The elegantly structured palate delivers black cherry, licorice, clove and espresso framed in youthfully austere but refined tannins. It's still young and tightly wound but balanced, with bright acidity. Drink 2020–2028.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Caparzo has crafted a beautiful, albeit simple, single-vineyard Brunello in this vintage. The 2012 Brunello di Montalcino Vigna la Casa is a plump and enriched red wine with juicy fruit flavors of blackberry, dried cherry, spice, leather and moist earth. The wine is very likable, yet it offers a more approachable style and less nuanced complexity as a result. I found less dimension here compared to some of its peers. However, I would gladly drink this bottle with a steaming plate of homemade fettuccine with wild boar ragù. That pairing would be delicious.
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Wine Spectator
This is rich, sporting cherry, graphite, leather and spice flavors allied to a taut, linear frame. Firm tannins dominate the earthy finish. Needs some time to come together. Best from 2021 through 2035.
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.