Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is a muscular 2017 with a dense palate of airy tannins that give form and composure to the young wine. It’s full and flavorful with white-truffle, cherry and orange-peel flavors at the end. Needs time to soften. Try after 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is a very interesting wine that tests a cool growing site in a hot vintage. The Castello Romitorio 2017 Brunello di Montalcino Filo di Seta comes from a high-altitude vineyard with dark soils and pockets of slate and shale. It is isolated in the mountains and surrounded by thick forests and Mediterranean shrub oak. That combination of unique elements has shaped a very articulate and attuned expression that boasts vibrant fruit, smoke, spice and wet stone. The finish is sharp and especially focused with age-worthy tannins and bright acidity.
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Wine Spectator
Vibrant and open, yet has fine concentration and firm tannins underneath, while black cherry, blackberry, tar, iron and tobacco flavors hold court. Solidly built, with excellent balance and length. 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.