The Vinous 98-pointer in one and a half litres. For a wine already counted to 2043, the magnum is not decadence but good sense: it matures more slowly and more evenly.
Deep ruby with a purple sheen. After swirling the nose gives dried violets and roses, black cherry and blackcurrant, cedar dust, sage and a smoky undertone. On the palate the wine is full and concentrated, with a velvet texture, wild strawberry and a fine citrus lift raising the ripeness; the tannins are taut but moving towards silk. From magnum everything is a degree more closed and younger than from bottle — the fruit leads, the structure clearly holds back. Cellar it well into the 2030s, or decant a good three hours ahead. Reckon on 2032 as the earliest moment, and then well into the 2040s.
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. Le Prata and La Torre mature separately and are united only at bottling.
With production of some 35,000 bottles a year this is a small estate. Large formats emerge from that in single figures.
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