The highest-rated standard Brunello this estate has ever made, in three litres. Vinous 98, Decanter 96, Parker 96, Wine Spectator 95. We have one. A bottle that will still be young when most of its vintage is gone.
Deep ruby with the first garnet glow. The nose is arresting and layered: dried flowers, autumnal spice, cedar-tinged cherries and a hint of clove, with violets, incense and leather behind. On the palate the wine sweeps across with a texture of pure silk, after which dark cherry and crushed stone come through with surprising intensity. The long, chalky tannins wrap around everything without gripping, leaving room for a succulent acidity. The finish is impossibly long. From three litres all of this is still young: from 2032, and then well past 2043. Serve around 18 degrees, with game, truffle or a mature cheese.
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 forty-two months in casks of 30 and 50 hectolitres of Slavonian oak from Garbellotto. Unfiltered.
The producer calls 2019 climatically variable: a warm, dry spring, heavy rain in May that built reserves, and then a very hot summer. Altitude did the rest.
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