Winemaker Notes
The Cortonesi Brunello di Montalcino La Mannella shows dark fruit with dried cherry, blackcurrant and plum. On a second wave of aromas, you encounter softer spice with toasted almond, tilled earth and grilled herb.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Youthful style with almost vinous character. Aromas of cherries, strawberry ice-cream, sweet flowers and toasted notes. Firm, chalky tannins with a supple shape, refreshing acidity and medium body. A little warming on the finish. Best from 2026.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Cortonesi 2020 Brunello di Montalcino La Mannella shows a mix of dark fruit and savory spice that adds to a bold aromatic profile. It delivers a medium finish and a point of leanness on the mid-palate that leads to a polished mouthfeel. This is the easier of the two single-vineyard expressions made by this estate (created with a food-friendly 13.5% alcoholic content). There is tannic bite on the close, but you also get plenty of sweet cherry fruit and blackcurrant.
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Vinous
The 2020 Brunello di Montalcino La Mannella smolders in the glass, earthy and tightly wound. Grilled herbs and crushed black raspberries are lifted by a hint of menthol. This displays silken textures and medium-bodied weight as waves of ripe red and blue fruits slowly saturate the senses. It finishes spicy and long, leaving edgy tannins offset by residual acidity as hints of tart blackberry fade.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Brunello Di Montalcino La Mannella is a youthful magenta/red color and is ripe and generous on the nose, with warming aromas of blackberry compote, violets, sweet earth, and crushed rosemary. Full-bodied, it offers ripe, expanding tannins, a well-balanced richness, and mouthwatering salty earth notes through the midpalate and finish. It's a very nicely styled wine in this vintage from Cortonesi to drink over the next 8-10 years.
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Wine Spectator
Cherry, plum, earth and eucalyptus flavors mark this straight-ahead, firmly structured red. A line of dusty tannins caps off the finish, upsetting the balance slightly. Best from 2027 through 2040. 3,500 cases made, 1,800 cases imported.
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.