Winemaker Notes
Ideal with red and white roast meats, poultry, game and aged cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva Poggio Abate (with only 6,600 heavy glass bottles released) takes an extra minute or two to open in the glass. Give it time to take on air and usher forth its pretty aromas. Ultimately, you will find that this is a powerful and profound expression of Sangiovese with black fruit at its core and savory aromas of leather and cured tobacco at the back. The wine is built like a brick wall thanks to its construction based on many smaller but ultimately stable individual components. The tannins are a bit rough and astringent, so this wine will require a few more years of bottling aging in order to loosen up.
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James Suckling
There is a swathe of deep and dark fruit here that delivers dark berries and plums with notes of licorice and cassia bark. The palate has attractive, ripe tannins that build nicely into the finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Rose, underbrush, wild-berry, leather and tobacco aromas mingle with whiffs of oak and coffee bean. Reflecting the nose, the dense full-bodied palate offers fleshy plum, licorice, vanilla, espresso and French oak alongside enveloping, close-grained tannins. Drink 2021–2028.
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.