Winemaker Notes
This wine is intense ruby red with deep garnet hues. The bouquet is intense and ethereal with aromas ranging from dark fruit and berries to chocolate, coffee, leather, licorice and balsamic notes. The wines are silky and elegant, potent yet balanced and characterized by sweet tannins.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
A tightly wound style, this red reveals cherry, blackberry, plum and violet flavors, with accents of earth and Mediterranean scrub. Fresh and solidly built, with a flinty, mineral-infused aftertaste. Shows terrific balance and persistence on the finish. Best from 2027 through 2045.
-
James Suckling
Camphor nose with notes of cherries and flowers, yet a bit low-key. Medium-bodied with velvety tannins and brisk acidity. Better on the palate than on the nose. Drink now or hold.
-
Vinous
A gorgeous blend of cherry-berry fruits, sweet autumnal spices, pipe tobacco and hints of mint waft up from the 2020 Brunello di Montalcino. Seamless and silken, it washes across the palate with ease, displaying rose-tinged red berry fruits as crystalline tannins add tactile grip toward the close. A staining of licorice and clove is left to linger as the 2020 tapers off lightly structured and with medium length. The balance here is beautiful— the 2020 comes across lifted and ethereal yet still complex.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Il Palazzone 2020 Brunello di Montalcino shows dried fruit aromas with a hint of candied orange peel and a distant floral note of rose potpourri. The wine is open-knit and accessible with finely textured tannins. It is a one-dimensional wine, however, from a vintage that shows less complexity overall. Exactly 16,176 bottles and other large formats were made.
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.