Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The latest release, the youthful red/ruby 2019 Brunello Di Montalcino is expressive on opening, with lush aromas of wild blackberries, sweet tobacco, fresh sage, and lavender cascading from the glass. Medium-bodied, it’s light on its feet while having good concentration and purity of fruit, ripe tannins, and notes of dusty earth and tangerine on the finish. A very attractive wine, it will benefit from another 6 months to a year in a bottle and have an open window over the coming 12 to 15 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The certified organic Tassi 2019 Brunello di Montalcino mirrors some of the qualities we saw in the new Rosso (Greppino 193) with a bright and lifted presentation. There is red cherry, pastry cream, plum and rose tea. The effect is delicate and elegant with fine, chalky tannins. These are the good kind of drying tannins that also remain silky.
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James Suckling
Attractive cherry and berry aromas with some orange peel. Medium body, firm tannins and a fresh finish. Linear and polished. Refined and focused. Subtle. From organically grown grapes. Drink after 2025.
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Vinous
Delicate yet impossible to ignore, the 2019 Brunello di Montalcino lifts from the glass with a darkly alluring bouquet of dried flowers, Tuscan dust and black cherries. This is silky-smooth yet racy in style, with cooling acidity and depths of tart wild berry fruits that slowly saturate toward the close. While tannins stain through the finish, the 2019 maintains a lovely freshness, leaving inner roses and licorice to taper off gradually.
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Wine Enthusiast
Deeply savory on the nose, with iron-rich soil, cured meat, leather, mixed Mediterranean herbs, sour cherry and cranberry. Salty and tart with wild cherry and wild strawberry, more cranberries and bergamot on the palate. Rolling, polished tannins.
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.