Winemaker Notes
This wine has a ruby red color and a nose of wild berry fruit. Velvety and rich on the palate, with great structure and smooth, rounded tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2007 Rosso di Montalcino is a soft, floral wine with pretty red fruits that meld into tobacco, spices and minerals. The wine possesses lovely inner perfume to match its accessible personality. The 2007 is a relatively open vintage for the Rosso, and while I don’t see this vintage making old bones, it should offer highly pleasurable drinking over the next few years at a minimum. In 2007 Bindocci decided to de-stem 70% of the fruit, which yielded an especially soft, approachable wine. Because Rosso is a wine generally made for near-term consumption, its hard to argue with that approach, especially in this economy. Still I miss the firmer style of Rosso the house is capable of. Anticipated maturity: 2009-2017.
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.