Winemaker Notes
A blend of grapes from Le Ragnaie's vineyards, expressing four distinct areas of Montalcino. It ages for 36 months in large Slavonian oak barrels and loyally expresses the trends of each vintage.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Vintner Riccardo Campinoti says he makes the wines "that I want to drink." The Le Ragnaie house style is classical, prizing transparency and freshness. His 2020 Brunello di Montalcino (with the white label) represents a blend of fruit from across various parcels. The bulk of the blend comes from the vineyards immediately adjacent to the winery at high elevations. It matures in Slavonian oak for 36 months with an extra year in cement. What stands out is the focus and energy of the bouquet with delicate berry and floral notes and even a touch of fresh mint. It boasts a polished texture.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Brunello Di Montalcino boasts a youthful red brick hue and offers a wonderful bouquet of aromatics already, with aromas of ripe cherries, fresh rosemary, cedar, and sweet incense. The palate is medium-bodied and snappy with ripe acidity, refined tannins, and a great mouthwatering finish revealing notes of ripe orange citrus and saline. It's very well-styled and hard to resist now, although it has the structure to age at a slow pace and improve over the coming 10-15 years.
Rating: 94+ -
Decanter
Blending lots from sites in the southeastern corner of Montalcino with those of the north, as well as the estate’s high altitude holdings dead centre of the zone, this is Le Ragnaie’s panoramic rendition of the vintage. It is influenced by a house preference to pick early and so highlights freshness and a midweight frame. Pomegranate is nuanced by rose, tobacco and forest floor. Light on its feet with an elegant, linear backbone, this has just the right amount of flesh on its bones.
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Vinous
The 2020 Brunello di Montalcino is impossibly fresh, blending wild strawberries and sweet herbal tones with stone dust and hints of wilted violets. This is a model of purity, soft and round yet focused with ripe wild berry fruits that saturate as saline minerals collect toward the close. It finishes long and staining yet still fresh, leaving a salty flourish and edgy tannins framing the experience.
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Wine Spectator
There's a hard, tannic edge to this red, defining its cherry, strawberry, floral and flinty mineral flavors. Linear and compact, this nonetheless delivers fine balance and length overall. Shows plenty of tension, which should bode well for its future evolution. Best from 2028 through 2045.
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.