Winemaker Notes
Caparzo Brunello di Montalcino La Casa is a ruby, tending towards garnet with age. Penetrating, ample, and extremely complex, with wild berry fruit, spice, and vanilla.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of berry, toffee and chocolate with cherry undertones. It’s full-bodied with a tight, focused palate with ripe tannins and a flavorful finish. Tight and polished. Needs bottle age to open and show its true potential. Try after 2023.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Caparzo 2016 Brunello di Montalcino Vigna La Casa reveals some fresh fruit with cherry and dark currant that continue to taste tart and fresh. The wine plays out nicely over the palate with medium-plus richness and youthful tannic structure. This is one of the best Brunello vintages since the new millennium. Rating: 95+
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Wine Spectator
The nose is reminiscent of Campari and soda, with fresh cherry and wild herb flavors. Refined and elegant, the lacy texture and harmonious profile also deliver fine length.—Non-blind Altesino/Caparzo Retrospective (April 2022). Best from 2027.
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Wine Enthusiast
Rose, graphite, star anise and eucalyptus aromas come to the forefront. The chiseled, racy palate features juicy morello cherry, licorice and coffee bean framed in close-grained tannins and bright acidity. Best after 2023.
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Wine & Spirits
First produced in 1977, La Casa comes from a single vineyard on the Montosoli hill in Montalcino’s northern sector, where cooler temperatures produced a Brunello with fresh cherry flavors infused with vibrant acidity. The wine aged for one year in French oak tonneaux and two years in larger casks, gaining notes of licorice and cacao that meld with the vivid red fruit tones. So expressive already, this wine has a long runway ahead.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Vigna La Casa is a five-hectare vineyard on the hill of Montosoli and was one of the first to be bottled as a single-vineyard in 1977. Medicinal herbs, balsamic, and black cherry fruit on the nose of the 2016 Brunello Di Montalcino La Casa follow through to the palate with consistency. The La Casa is fuller in body, with more depth and intensity. Texturally, it offers a generous and pure mid-palate of fruit, with tannins that build on the finish. Drink over the next 10 to 15 years.
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.