The decade's most difficult year — three stars from the Consorzio — and interesting precisely for that: Robert Parker gave this wine 92 points. Slender, taut and pure.
Bright ruby with crimson reflections and a garnet rim. The nose is restrained and needs air; then come wild berries and blueberry, bitter almond, liquorice and dried rose petals, with a mild smoky or ashy touch beneath. On the palate the wine is markedly slender and taut — extremely streamlined and tight, as Parker wrote — with an acidity that holds it upright and tannins that are fine rather than commanding. The finish is pure and medium-long, closing on liquorice. Open it a good hour ahead; it genuinely needs that time. Around 18 degrees. Lovely with poultry, mushrooms or a light game dish.
In Montalcino, grandparents call their granddaughters potazzine, after the small, brightly coloured birds of the Tuscan countryside. That is what their grandmother called Viola and Sofia, the daughters of owner Gigliola Giannetti — and the estate grew in step with them: Viola was born in 1993, the founding year, and when Sofia arrived in 1996 two more hectares took the total to five.
The Brunello is made traditionally here: a spontaneous fermentation of some forty days on the estate's own wild yeasts, without temperature control, followed by more than three years in casks of 30 and 50 hectolitres of Slavonian oak from Garbellotto. Unfiltered.
Selection happens here on sorting tables, by hand. "We are four women who select the grapes", says Gigliola Giannetti. In a year like 2014 that counts twice.
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