Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Le Ragnaie 2021 Brunello di Montalcino Passo del Lume Spento (with 4,400 bottles produced) offers a blossoming bouquet that shifts continuously with each swirl of the glass. Aged for 42 months in large Slavonian oak casks, the wine delivers striking freshness and almost icy sensations on the palate, with crisp contours, sharp focus and a brilliantly vertical profile. Sourced from one hectare at 621 meters in elevation on galestro and sandstone soils, it combines darker fruit and savory minerality with firm structure. The high elevation plays a decisive role in preserving the biting freshness and punchy energy that make this wine so compelling.
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Wine Spectator
Starts out with plenty of finesse, its silky texture enveloping flavors of cherry, strawberry, rose hip, mineral and wild herbs. As this builds midpalate, a firm line of chalky tannins emerges, along with vibrant acidity, providing the structure to age. Shows superb balance and long aftertaste. Best from 2030 through 2050.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A slightly deeper red hue introduces the 2021 Brunello Di Montalcino Passo Del Lume Spento, which is floral and expressive on the nose, with violets, raspberries, fresh leather, ripe cherries, sweet herbs, and a smoky undertone. The palate is medium to full-bodied and focused, with refreshing acidity, ripe tannins, and a long finish that keeps it energetic and precise. I love this vintage for this wine, and it should age beautifully.
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Vinous
Grilled herbs and crushed ashen stones give way to pine shavings and woodland berries as the 2021 Brunello di Montalcino Passo Del Lume Spento creates its beguiling bouquet. It is savory to the core, with stern minerality upfront that adds a salty contrast to its core of red fruits and inner rosy florals. Nearly wiry in feel through the finish, it reveals a youthful tension as edgy tannins linger, offset by a bump of residual acidity. In 2021 the Passo Del Lume Spento has an almost sultry character, which I'm really enjoying.
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.