Winemaker Notes
Incredibly powerful, bold, and complex, this brunello is bursting with bing and maraschino cherries, cassis, and just a hint of balsamic. Only made during exceptional years from a very special selection.
Perfect with steak Fiorentina or quiet contemplation.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very opulent style with loads of black-cherry, plum, chocolate, cookie, and dark-chocolate aromas and flavors. It’s full-bodied and very layered with loads of fruit and spices. Extremely long and flavorful. Needs time to come completely together, but so gorgeous. Drink now or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Poggio Antico 2015 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva (with 9,000 bottles going to market in January 2021) is a thickly textured and rich wine with fruit-driven flavors and extra fiber. The wine sings with the characteristics of this vintage that will be remembered for the sunshine, the warmth and the picture-perfect fruit. Each cluster hung from the vine with glorious perfection. There is more warmth and dark plum intensity here for sure, and you also get greater latitude in terms of those savory tones of leather, tobacco and tilled earth. The Riserva is sourced from the Il Vignone site at a high 500 meters above sea level where summer breezes keep the grapes healthy and ripe.
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Wine Enthusiast
Aromas of truffle, mocha, new leather and camphor mingle with a whiff of oak driven spice. Combining structure and elegance, the full-bodied, savory palate delivers black cherry, blackberry, licorice and espresso framed in firm, fine-grained tannin's. Drink 2022–2030.
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.