Winemaker Notes
#5 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2021
Ruby red in color with light granite hues. The nose is clean, elegant, and prevalent of fruity notes such as ripe plum and wild cherry mainly; with agreeable scents of flint, balsamic notes, violet, and spices. All these fragrances make the bouquet complex and harmonic. Greatly structured, sapid and agreeably fresh. Its great acidity makes this wine very charming and elegant. The sunny vintage makes high-density tannins but never too aggressive. The result is an important and elegant wine with a long and persistent finish
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Brunello di Montalcino is lifted with aromatics of soft medicinal herbs, fresh soil, cherry fruit, and dried flowers. The palate is fresh with black cherry fruit, tea leaf, orange peel, and mineral-rich, stony earth. There is well-integrated structure, with crispness, fresh acidity, and a beautifully long finish. This is one of my favorite wines of the vintage for its classic structure, high complexity, and nuanced, balanced style. Drink 2025-2042.
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Wine Enthusiast
This gorgeous wine opens with fragrant aromas of violet, wild berry, new leather, tilled earth and spice. Showing the estate’s hallmark elegance, structure and precision, the focused, full-bodied palate delivers cherry, crushed raspberry, star anise and tobacco before finishing on a note of black tea. Taut, refined tannins and bright acidity keep it vibrant and balanced. Drink 2024–2046.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
Pretty strawberry, currant and cherry flavors take center stage in this taut and linear red, flanked by floral, mineral and tobacco notes, with fine balance and intensity on a slim frame. This is ample, yet the refined tannins provide structure. Best from 2024 through 2048.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Le Chiuse's 2016 Brunello di Montalcino is a wine buzzing with energy and spirit. You sense this in the sheer crunch and snap of the primary fruit that recalls wild berry, cassis and sour cherry. Those lifted red fruit aromas are framed by light smoke, tar, potting soil, blue flower and crushed mineral or limestone. This is an extremely elegant wine that has been shaped by an epic vintage. The wine draws its fruit from an eight-hectare parcel with limestone clay. Le Chiuse's star is rapidly rising, and this new release from 2016 just thrust that shooting star into hyper speed. With 13,576 bottles made, this estate gives us one of the best buys of the vintage.
Rating: 97+ -
James Suckling
This is a very finely polished Brunello with cherry, chocolate and walnut, as well as dried flowers on the nose and palate. It’s full-bodied with creamy, polished tannins and a long finish. Drink in 2023.
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.