Winemaker Notes
Ruby, tending towards garnet with age. The bouquet is penetrating, ample, and extremely complex, with wild berry fruit, spice and vanilla. Dry, warm, firm, harmonious, delicate and austere, and persistent.
Pair with roasts, grilled and spit-roasted meats, game, braised meats, and aged cheeses.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
This is really pretty, with cherry, peach, and orange-peel character. It’s medium-bodied with very fine tannins and a long, long finish. Creamy and so polished. It goes on for minutes. A graceful and complex 2020 Brunello. Is this better than the 2019? Drink after 2027, but already beautiful to taste.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
A jeweled red color, the 2020 Brunello Di Montalcino La Casa is ripe and pure with notes of preserved cherries, violets, fresh leather, and sweet herbs. I love this wine, which has a wonderfully approachable feel and crystalline but ripe fruit shining all the way through it. A real charmer with ripe tannins, even seamless acidity, and a great finish, it's beautiful now but has a lot of life ahead of it. Bravo. Drink 2025-2045.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
From a single-vineyard site that is recognized by the old Tuscan farmhouse nestled among the vines, this is a more concentrated and fleshed-out expression of Sangiovese. The 2020 Brunello di Montalcino Vigna La Casa opens to dark fruit aromas, sweet earth and toasted oak. The finish is not too powerful, and that's exactly what gives this wine its elegant mouthfeel. Annual production hovers around 14,000 bottles.
-
Vinous
The 2020 Brunello di Montalcino Vigna La Casa is dark and imposing, placing earth tones, crushed rocks and savory spice before its notes of flinty wild berry fruits. It's silky-smooth, nearly creamy in feel, with masses of mineral-tinged cherry and strawberry tones as a hint of exotic spice emerges toward the close. The 2020 tapers off wonderfully perfumed and long, mixing violets and lavender with nuances of sour citrus over a bed of fine-grained tannins. The balance here is otherworldly.
Rating: 94+ -
Decanter
On the opposite side of the Montosoli hill from sister estate Altesino, Caparzo’s five hectares face south to southeast towards the town of Montalcino. The 2020 speaks to its warmer exposition with aromas of ripe blackcurrants and deep violets punctuated by juniper and flint. Rich and smooth, the palate sees brambly berries repeat, with a soupçon of chocolate in the background. There's sufficient mid-palate concentration but overall it is medium in weight, and its suede-like tannins supply a textured tug on the finish.
-
Wine Spectator
Though compact and tightly knit, this red delivers a beam of strawberry, raspberry, mineral and spice flavors, and there's a hint of milk chocolate as this plays out on the finish. Offers beautiful balance and a resonant aftertaste. Best from 2028 through 2046.
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.