Winemaker Notes
This wine is a perfect match for roasted or grilled red meats, game, venison, stewed wild boar. Excellent with mature cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Lightly dried fruit with citrus and cherry character. Medium body with fresh acidity and a linear and bright finish. Lively and delicious for the vintage. Drink now or hold.
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Wine Spectator
This solidly built red is marked by bright black currant, black cherry, rosemary, iron and tar flavors. Shows strong grip on the finish from the burly and lightly astringent tannins, all the while remaining fresh. Best from 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Fattoria dei Barbi 2017 Brunello di Montalcino is quite rich and velvety in appearance and in sensation. The wine carries extra fruit weight that is linked to the warm and dry conditions of the vintage, and that richer core is a sounding board for ripe and plummy fruit aromas. I can smell the oak barrels too, and although they don't impart obvious spice or toast, they add soft, earthy contours to this full-bodied Brunello. This ample 158,000-bottle release offers an accessible personality overall.
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.