The Wine Enthusiast 97-pointer in one and a half litres. From a drought year in which the altitude of these vineyards saved the freshness, and in which the magnum extends that freshness further.
Bright ruby with garnet reflections. The nose gives crushed mint and pressed rose, perfumed berry, violets and medicinal herbs, with sweet smoke and clove beneath. Taut and precise on the palate, with dusty black cherry, a tart citrus edge and velvet tannins that carry without dominating. From magnum the wine is clearly less far along than from bottle: the fruit is younger, the spice tucked deeper away and the finish holds back for longer. Where the bottle is ready now, this format has another five to eight years ahead. Around 18 degrees, decanted generously. 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.
The producer calls 2017 a year of extremes: frost in mid-April, drought all summer, and only in August the turn towards optimal ripening.
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