Winemaker Notes
This wine has an intense color and aromas with ample notes of red berries. On the palate gives a body of great balance with tannins well integrated into the structure, which ensures elegance and longevity.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Savory and loaded with personality, this soulful red opens with aromas of mature wild berries, camphor, new leather and forest floor. Showing surprising freshness and remarkable balance for the hot vintage, the palate has an earthy elegance, featuring juicy Marasca cherry, blood orange, crushed mint, underbrush and star anise set against a backbone of firm, crushed-velvet tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Caprili 2017 Brunello di Montalcino is lovely. The wine strikes that great balance of dark fruit, rose and tar that makes Brunello unique, and it doesn't have those rough edges or stemmy tannins that you see sometimes in this undeniably hot and dry vintage. This expression remains elegant but also generous, and that's not an easy intersection to reach. This is a standout wine from 2017, despite the challenges and the lower yields obtained this year.
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Wine Spectator
Red cherry, strawberry, rose and underbrush aromas and flavors introduce this solidly structured red, which is driven as much by lively acidity as dense tannins. Overall this feels balanced, finishing with focused fruit, mineral and earth elements. Best from 2025.
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.