Winemaker Notes
Ruby red in color, this Brunello di Montalcino is clean and elegant with an intense and complex bouquet. The wine is rich in scents of dark fruit along with spicy notes of tobacco, chocolate, and leather. The wine is warm with soft tannins that give it excellent structure and a feminine finish with considerable aging capacity.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2006 Brunello di Montalcino is one of the more perfumed, vibrant wines to emerge from the southern reaches of Montalcino. Freshly cut flowers, minerals, licorice and juicy black cherries all come together beautifully in this gracious, utterly impeccable Brunello. With time in the glass the wine puts on weight, but the tannins retain considerable elegance and finesse. Sublte hints of oak linger on the impeccable finish. This is a fabulous effort from Talenti. Anticipated maturity: 2016-2031.
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Wine Enthusiast
Talenti delivers a very impressive Brunello with inky-dark concentration and background layers of coffee, espresso, fudge and maraschino cherry. Give it more time to age so that those sharp points of firmness can soften and widen.
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.