Winemaker Notes
Pair it with a hearty osso buco, a gamey braise, or aged cheeses. This vintage was blessed with fine weather through the growing season and yielded expressive wines with assertive structure and long potential in the cellar.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Complex aromas of dried figs, dark fruits and hints of walnuts and dried meat. Full body, dense and polished palate. Velvety and poised tannins and a flavorful finish. Yet always refined and beautiful. You want to drink it now and can, but it has a beautiful future.
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Wine Enthusiast
Bright and loaded with an earthy finesse, this offers alluring scents of wild berry, pressed violet, new leather, aromatic herb and a balsamic note. The ultrarefined palate doles out juicy red cherry, cranberry and star anise set against fresh acidity and firm, polished tannins. Drink 2019–2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Brunello di Montalcino offers bright intensity and an elegant approach. The bouquet is redolent of cassis, dried blackberry, toasted almond and pipe tobacco. There are sweet notes from the fruit and savory notes developed over the wine's long aging period. Both aspects are nicely contrasted against each other. This wine should continue to evolve and will put on more weight with age.
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Wine Spectator
This is spicy, complementing the cherry and leather flavors with vanilla and licorice details. Firms up, with a layer of tannins gripping the finish. Best from 2020 through 2033.
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.