Winemaker Notes
Le Chiuse Brunello is a clear wine, bright garnet red in colour. It has an intense persistent fragrance, pure and full-bodied. Various fragrances can be recognize, from forest fruits to lightvanilla. To the taste the wine is smooth and elegant, dry with an excellent persistent of aroma.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
One of the best wines of the vintage, this stunner opens with compelling aromas of new leather, forest floor, perfumed berry and menthol. Full-bodied and elegantly structured, the delicious palate delivers crushed raspberry, ripe Marasca cherry, baking spice and licorice set against firm, refined tannins. It boasts remarkable freshness and balance for the hot vintage. Best After 2025.
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Decanter
Lorenzo Magnelli opted to pick early to avoid opulence in 2017. Along with gentler punch-downs and fewer pump-overs, he aged the wine for less time in wood – 30 months rather than 36 – as he felt it didn’t need too much oxygen. Vibrancy of expression is palpable in the tangle of spices, woodland berries, earthy mushroom and forest growth. The palate is sturdy but not aggressive as well-composed tannins sweep across the palate. Perhaps all that's missing in the 2017 is the extra detail and length of some of the previous vintages.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Le Chiuse 2017 Brunello di Montalcino (made with certified organic fruit) exhibits a silky and elegant profile that only a handful of estates in the appellation achieve with consistency. This is the desired direction of Brunello as a whole I believe, and it's nice to see these successful results in a difficult, hot vintage such as 2017. The wine is silky and glossy on the palate with wildflowers, berry and forest floor. Production is 15,500 bottles. Best after 2024.
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Wine Spectator
Offers key themes of black cherry, blackberry and violet aromas and flavors, with mineral, tobacco and bitter almond accents. Solidly built, with dense tannins expanding on the finish. Overall, there is a sense of elegance here, with a silkiness and persistence. Best from 2025.
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James Suckling
This shows some balance and polish for a 2017, with plenty of integrated and nicely chewy tannins. The ripe-cherry, bark and light dry-earth character comes through clearly. Give it time to soften, but already attractive.
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.