Winemaker Notes
Bright and intense ruby-red color. Complex and intense nose with hints of ripe red jammy fruit, spice, vanilla, black pepper and tobacco. It has an intense yet balanced palate with great structure and a nice richness in polyphenols. A powerful "big" wine.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
The nose opens savory, peppery, and medicinal, then turns sweet and cool, before the palate drizzles abundant vanilla and chocolate over raspberries to create a comforting yet substantial sensation.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is a rich and powerful Brunello with a little extra concentration and grit to keep you warm on a chilly winter's night. It also reveals a potent 15% alcohol content that will serve well on those occasions. The organic 2019 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva shows a lot of natural intensity with dried blackberry, baked plum and toasted almond shavings. The tannins are velvety and the wine remains quite structured throughout. It is aged in cement and aged in both tonneaux and large oak casks.
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Wine Spectator
Compelling aromas and flavors of black cherry, plum, juniper, eucalyptus, iron and flint are matched by abundant energy. Despite the broad band of piercing tannins underneath, this red is vivid and balanced while driving to the extended finish, which evokes earth, leather and orange peel elements. Best from 2028 through 2047.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Brunello Di Montalcino Riserva is a deep ruby/red color and is layered in the glass with pleasing floral and subtle rustic undertones in its aromas of cherry lozenge, sweet sage, violets, saddle leather, and tobacco leaf. The palate is pure and focused, with full-bodied concentration, ripe tannins, bright acidity, and a crunchy fresh feel throughout a great finish. I have been enamored by these releases from Donatella Cinelli Colombini, and this is certainly no exception. Drink 2026-2040.
Rating: 94+ -
Vinous
The 2019 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva captivates with an earthy bouquet of flowery underbrush, leather and smoke that gives way to dried strawberries and hints of pipe tobacco. Seamlessly silky and medium-bodied, it flows across the palate with licorice-tinged wild berry fruits as autumnal spices amass toward the close. The 2019 finishes with hulking tannins offset by a bump of residual acidity as nuances of plum mix with a bitter nip of ground cloves. This will require patience but has the balance for a long and steady evolution.
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James Suckling
Berries, chocolate and spices. Medium-bodied, it has a framed palate with vivid flavors. Very structured with intense tannins that give form and tension to the wine. From organically grown grapes. Give it two or three years to soften.
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.