A single magnum from a five-star vintage rated 97 by Vinous. Elegant and polished, at 13.5 percent alcohol — a Brunello that lives on finesse rather than force.
A wonderful ruby red, luminous and bright. The nose is darkly alluring: flowery underbrush, worn leather and sage, then crushed strawberry and autumnal spice, with pulverised stone and pressed violet. Taut and polished on the palate, with sapid, almost saline tannins and a spicy acidity holding everything upright; at 13.5 percent alcohol the wine stays light on its feet. From magnum it shows noticeably younger than from bottle, and keeps its fruit rather closer to its chest. At its best from 2030 and then well into the 2040s. Decant, generously. Lovely with roast lamb, duck breast or a truffle risotto.
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.
2020 was the year of lockdown. The family tended the vineyards by hand until, in the producer's words, they looked like gardens.
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