Winemaker Notes
Ruby red color. Ethereal, deep, balanced nose with a wide, persistent bouquet and fine touches of fruit and spices. Elegant, soft taste round and velvety to the palate.
Professional Ratings
-
Tasting Panel
Pretty notes of bay scrub, red cherry, exotic flowers, licorice, and wild herbs. A beautifully chiseled texture enhances mocha-tinged tannins. Earth and black olive on the lengthy finish.
-
James Suckling
Sweet berries and black cherries with some flowers and dark earth, too. It’s full-bodied with velvety, chewy tannins that leave a slightly dry impression. But it should come around nicely with three or four years of bottle age. Try after 2024.
-
Wine Spectator
Rich, with plum, blackberry and pomegranate flavors shaded by iron and tobacco accents. The structure comes mainly from the dense tannins and the fruit flavors are slightly muddled, yet this is long overall. Best from 2024
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.