Please join us this Friday (5:30-7:30) and Saturday (4:30-6:30) for our
FREE weekly tastings. This week the Vino staff will be pouring two bottlings of Rosso di Montalcino and three Brunellos.
For more information on this and other events at Vino, please email events@vinosite.com.
Two weeks ago, I was privileged to speak for the Consorzio
del Vino Brunello di Montalcino vintage tasting at I Trulli. There were
members of the press and also representatives from a number of Brunello
houses. We tasted a wide variety of wines (all Brunello, of course), from
1997 back to 1979. They were all four- and five-star-rated vintages. The
wines were all showing very well and it goes to prove my point that
Sangiovese can last a very long time.
The town of Montalcino
sits on a hilltop overlooking the vineyards. It is 1,850 feet above sea
level. It gets its name from the holm oak or holly,
known as ilice or leccio
in Italian and ilex in Latin, a tree commonly found in the hills
around the township. (Montalcino = "monte"
+ "ilice", or "mountain of
holly".) The holm oak is the symbol of Consorzio. It is also the symbol found on the city's
crest. Montalcino and the surrounding area is a rural area, with woody hills,
very quiet, and is found about 40 minutes south of Siena.
The production zone lies within the hilly region of the Chianti Senese district south of Siena. The climate is Mediterranean
and it is hotter and drier than the Chianti Classico
area. The lower slopes where the grapes grow are made of clayey soil and
marl. The higher slopes where the better grapes are grown are made up of a
combination of limestone, marl, and galestro,
the classic yellowish stone of Toscana. The grapes ripen ten days later in
the area around the town of Montalcino
than they do in the area around Sant'Angelo in Colle and Sant'Angelo Scalo.
Brunello is synonymous with the name Biondi Santi, who first produced the wine in 1888. In
Montalcino, 150 years ago, the typical wine was white and the most revered
wine was Moscadello dessert wine made from Moscato
grapes. Most white wine then was a mixture of different grapes and they used
the governo method the same way they did in
Chianti (in other words, they added roughly 10% dried-grape wine must back
into the wine during vinification). Brunello is thus called because of the
color of the grape, which is brownish (brunello
is a diminutive of bruno in Italian, meaning
"brown"). The wine has become known as Brunello and the grape has
become known as Sangiovese Grosso. While the Biondi family and then the Biondi
Santi family (after inter-marriage) were making
wine from Brunello during the nineteenth century, it was not until Ferruccio Biondi Santi started not only to bottle the wine on a regular
basis but to make it just from Sangiovese Grosso
that Brunello was truly born. There are still bottles of his 1888 and 1891 Brunellos in the cellar at the Biondi
Santi estate. Up until the 1960s, there was almost
nobody who was bottling Brunello and certainly no one who was keeping the
older vintages. In the 1970s, there were roughly 25 producers in Brunello. In
1978, an American company, Banfi, which is the
largest continuous land-holder in Italy, bought property in
Montalcino. Today, there are more than 200 producers of Brunello.
In the beginning, following Ferruccio's lead, when
the DOC law was passed in the 1960s, Brunello had to be aged for four years
in cask before being bottled. That went down to three and a half years, then
three years, and now two years. In other words, a regular Brunello has to be
aged for two years in cask and four months minimum in bottle by law.
According to regulations, the wine must not be released before January 1
after the harvest: so, for example, the 2002 was released in January of 2007.
The Riserva must also be aged at least two years in cask and six months in
bottle but cannot be released for five years. The 2001 Riserva, for example,
was released in January of 2007. Brunello can only be released in a
Bordeaux-type bottle.
There are many producers in Brunello now and a lot of them are not in the
best places. Some of them are on lower slopes where the soil is very clayey
and does not really produce good wine. Franco Biondi
Santi was the last member to join the Consorzio. The Brunello Consorzio
is the only consorzio in Italy with
100% membership. Franco, who makes wine exactly the same way his grandfather Ferruccio and his father Tancredi
did, is, of course, a traditionalist. He went along with them having only two
years in cask but now thinks it may have been a mistake since some of the
members want to limit it to one year in cask and introduce other varietals.
We, like Franco, hope this does not happen.
Brunello, in my opinion, is, of course, one of the great wines of the world.
It can last for 30 years or longer. Franco Biondi Santi recommends that when you drink his 1997 that you
open it at least four days before you drink the wine. It is a wine that needs
to be aged. In fact, it is the only wine that seems to get more depth of
flavor and body as it gets older. Personally, I would not look at a bottle of
Brunello unless it was at least ten years old. I would look at it but that
doesn't mean I would drink it! It is a wine that is ruby-red in color when
young. It has good acidity, good fruit, and tannins, which will make it last
a long time.
--Charles Scicolone, Wine Director, I Trulli and Vino
Charles would love to hear from you. Please email him at charles@vinosite.com
