Winemaker Notes
A wonderful accompaniment to red meat, stews, complex dishes and aged cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This savory stunner has enticing scents of violet, rose and wild berry that gain complexity alongside notes of leather, camphor and sandalwood. The elegantly structured palate is all about precision, featuring juicy cherry, blood orange, star anise and tobacco framed in taut, refined tannins. Bright acidity keeps it energized. Drink 2024–2046.
Cellar Selection -
Decanter
With a history stretching back to the mid-16th century, Conti Costanti is one of the founding estates of the Brunello di Montalcino denomination, run by Andrea Costanti since 1983. He follows up his gorgeously seductive 2015 with a stunningly refined and gracious 2016. Savoury earthy notes are accompanied by nuanced dried florals, citrus peel and pure red berries. It reaches profound depths on the palate where compact, ripe and dusty tannins promise a long cellaring life. It's so seamlessly put together that it's almost a shame to try teasing it apart.
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Wine Spectator
This red features a superb balance between ripe cherry, raspberry and currant fruit and savory elements of juniper and thyme. Earth and mineral accents add detail, and this has everything in the right proportions for a long life ahead. Best from 2024 through 2045.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Conti Costanti 2016 Brunello di Montalcino shows warm fruit layering with cherry, wild raspberry and plum. You might also notice some touches of sweetness with candied orange skin and lavender honey. At the back of it all, you get tilled earth and a touch of black olive. This wine reveals good complexity to the bouquet and follows up with a streamlined, mid-weight mouthfeel.
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.