The Wine Enthusiast 99-pointer in one and a half litres, from the five-star 2016 vintage. The finest standard Brunello this estate has made, in the format that lasts longest.
Luminous garnet with bright reflections. The nose is earthy and perfumed: blue flowers and rose, undergrowth and leather, with blackberry, tobacco, musk and liquorice. Elegant and enveloping on the palate, with a vibrant minerality cutting through the ripe fruit and fine, fully integrated tannins. From magnum the wine shows younger and more reserved than from bottle: the earthy layer still sits beneath the fruit rather than beside it, and the finish holds back. Which is exactly what you want from a wine that only peaks in the 2030s. Around 18 degrees, decanted generously. Lovely with roast red meat, game or an aged pecorino.
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.
2016 received five stars from the Consorzio and counts across Italy as one of the great years of the century.
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