Winemaker Notes
Created by the blend of a careful selection of their 4 crus. Shows the best qualities of Sangiovese, with complex evolution of bouquet, succulent acidity and silky tannins. Combines finesse and body, structure and elegance.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Gianni Brunelli Le Chiuse di Sotto 2016 Brunello di Montalcino is a stunning wine with so much vitality, life and energy. It shows a brazen level of clarity and frankness. If you seek the truth in Sangiovese, I think you find it here. This Brunello unfolds to lasting purity, elegance and length. It is luminous and radiant. When tasted next to the 2015 Riserva from this estate (something I did on multiple passes), I continued to recognize the lifted and exciting personality of this wine next to the broader and heavier character of the Riserva. This Brunello shows extreme precision and focus, both to the bouquet and the mouthfeel. Wild berry, blue flower and licorice converge to perfection, and it's impossible to beat this quality at this price.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Brunello di Montalcino is aromatic of kirsch, tobacco leaf, cedar, and forest floor. The palate is polished with fine tannin's around a core of ripe fruit, with red plum, orange peel, and bitter amaro-like herbs. Refined and balanced, the 2016 will certainly benefit from time in cellar to unfold and reveal its further complexity. Cellar 3-6 years and drink 2025-2040.
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Wine Enthusiast
Fragrant, focused and loaded with finesse, this stunner has enticing scents of rose petal, camphor, tilled earth and perfumed berry. Vibrant and savory, the chiseled palate delivers juicy red cherry, pomegranate, star anise and savory mineral framed in taut, refined tannin's. Bright acidity keeps it radiant and balanced. Drink 2024–2041.
Cellar Selection
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Wine Spectator
This red starts out round and full of black cherry, licorice, earth, tobacco and oak spice flavors, ending with muscular, mouthcoating tannins, yet balances of all the elements. Lingers with an aftertaste of dark fruit, spice and mineral. Best from 2024 through 2045.
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James Suckling
Very fine tannins show right away and nicely frame the subtle cherry, cedar, mahogany and light chocolate notes. It’s medium-to full-bodied, firm and linear. Try after 2023.
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.