From a year of extremes — April frost, drought all summer — that made the altitude of these vineyards tell. Wine Enthusiast awarded 97 points.
Bright ruby with garnet reflections. The nose is pronounced and fresh for the year: crushed mint and pressed rose, perfumed berry, violets and medicinal herbs, with sweet smoke and clove beneath. On the palate the wine is taut and precise, with dusty black cherry, a tart citrus edge and a velvet tannic structure that carries the whole without dominating. The freshness is striking for a drought year and betrays the altitude of the vineyards. The finish is complex and persistent. Drinking window 2025 to 2032, so exactly right now. Around 18 degrees, after an hour in a decanter. Lovely with rosemary-roasted lamb or a dish with truffle.
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 thirty to thirty-five days on the estate's own wild yeasts, without temperature control, followed by forty months in casks of 30 and 50 hectolitres of Slavonian oak from Garbellotto. Unfiltered.
Altitude is no side note here. Three hectares lie at 507 metres, exceptional for Montalcino, and in a hot year like 2017 that is the difference.
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