Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Really delicious fruit with cherry and berry character, as well as a hint of cedar. Creamy tannins and fresh acidity. Grapes from the Cerretalto vineyard are used here this year. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Casanova di Neri 2020 Brunello di Montalcino (with the white label) represents a departure from the norm. Because the Cerretalto was not produced, fruit from that vineyard with its reddish mineral-rich soils was directed here instead. For that reason, this wine is especially spicy, lifted and intense. Dark cherry fruit is followed by rusty nail, black pepper and milled spice. The wine is fermented in steel tanks, sees 20 days of skin maceration and ages in botte and tonneaux for over three years. The oak is very well integrated. This is a wine of character (with 98,000 bottles made).
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Wine Spectator
Exhibiting cherry, raspberry, eucalyptus, iron and spice aromas and flavors, this supple red is complex and compelling. Supported by a swath of dusty tannins, yet everything feels in the right place. Excellent length. Best from 2027 through 2042.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A deep red/brick color, the 2020 Brunello Di Montalcino is ripe with notes of black cherries, tea leaves, dark, sappy herbs, and forest floor. Full-bodied, it's ripe and inviting, with a velvety texture and a great warming finish, and while it's a ripe wine, it carries it with a weightless feel and does not feel heavy-handed. It should continue to drink well over the next 10-12 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.