Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Lovely purity of fruit here with plums, cherries, licorice, tomato leaves and hibiscus. It’s full-bodied, all in balance, with a firm and fine tannin frame and seamless, creamy texture. Focused. More mineral and tight in the finish. From organically grown grapes. Better after 2025.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Brunello Di Montalcino is a more potent and amplified wine, with luxurious aromas of toasted cedar, dark mineral earth, menthol, and black cherry liqueur. It is full through the palate, with ripe mouth-coating fruit layering around fine ripe tannins and a long-lasting finish. Its ripe black fruit of berries and plum intertwines with incense and leather. This is a solid and wonderful wine to cellar for a few years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The organic La Magia 2018 Brunello di Montalcino is a subdued and elegant expression with a very genuine quality that is ultimately the wine's biggest asset. You taste the skin and the pulp of the Sangiovese grape in this wine that remains very true to the variety. Wild cherry, cassis and crushed limestone give the wine plenty of linearity and freshness. Elements of the bouquet remind you of a natural wine.
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Vinous
The 2018 Brunello di Montalcino is smoky in the glass, with a blend of crushed rocks and savory spice accentuating dried black cherries. It’s soft and round in feel, energized by juicy acidity that propels its mineral-tinged red fruits across the palate. A coating of fine tannins is left to reside, along with violet inner florals and sweet spice, through the long and dramatic finale. Finding a balance of potent fruit and structure is often one of the challenges of the 2018 vintage, yet La Magia pulled it off without a hitch.
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Wine Enthusiast
A sanguine, umami nose of black olives, soil, balsamic vinegar and pencil shavings gets some pop from astringent undertones of fennel and cranberries. On the warm, full palate, cherries and strawberries bring out the cranberries' dormant sweetness, above an enduring flintiness highlighted by bergamot and salted dark chocolate.
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.